An Old Wall
by Rostov23
Summary: With the Rebellion thoroughly crushed on Gauda Prime, and all the former rebels lost or scattered across the universe, a new group of freedom fighters decide to take on the Federation, with the unwilling help of a man long presumed dead...
1. Prologue

**Hello All,**

 **This is a re-posting of a story I tried putting up here quite a while ago. After some very helpful comments I decided to take it down and do a bit of work on it before re-posting it. I'm thinking it'll be a pretty quick roll-out since it's basically done, baring a few final edits. Hope it's an enjoyable read. Please leave comments in the box below, as I find them very helpful!**

* * *

When the smoke cleared it seemed at first that there was nothing left, a full room suddenly emptied. The Claxton still sounded, red emergency lights throbbed, acrid smoke stayed sharp and pungent in the nostrils.

But they were all still there, in some form or another, just sprawled on the ground, instead of standing upright. Blood slashed the walls and floor, decorated the bodies, stiffening black uniform fabric and leather and flesh as it cooled and darkened.

Necks craned slowly down, eyes scanning limp extremities for any twitch of movement.

In the center of the room, two figures, laying one on top of the other, an almost protective posture taken by the man on top, his now empty hand outstretched towards the blaster still warm from his touch.

By the time Sleer entered, with all the splendor befitting the President of the Terren Federation, Ruler of the High Counsel, Lord of the Inner and Outer Worlds, High Admiral of the Galactic Fleets, Lord General of the Six Armies, and Defender of the Earth, most of the troopers had reached the conclusion that cleanup would be a shorter job than recounting her collected titles.

She took in the piles of black-clad bodies, the unnamed troopers she mourned the loss of not at all.

Next, she scanned the rebels, Villa, hands still clutched over his chest, crumpled to his knees and over onto his face. Dayna, on her back, an almost comical expression frozen on her face. Tarrant, legs tucked awkwardly under him, blood smearing across his young face and curly tangled hair.

A stray memory told her that those closed lids hid a pair of vivid blue eyes, and she felt the phantom brush for warm sand across her skin.

The blonde was there as well…Soolin? Dead as she had lived, efficiently, without fuss. She lay straight, arm pillowing her head, blaster still held firmly in her hand.

And Avon.

Sleer walked slowly to the center of the room, weaving a trail through a hazard of draped arms and legs. The alarm had been silenced, but clouds of blaster smoke still hung in the air. The light remained red and dim. Shattered plass and twisted metal crackled with each footstep, ringing loud in the eerily quiet room.

Using an immaculately polished pump, she pressed the leather-clad body over onto its back. It resisted at first, and then tumbled with momentum off the body below him, head falling free to hit the cold floor with a thud, one hand still firmly grasping the tattered shirt of the man under him.

Blake lay prone, blood pooling around him in an even, uninterrupted circle.

She snapped her fingers at a group of troopers standing at the edge of the room, and two hurried over and hauled him over onto his back, disrupting the angelic symmetry of his death pose.

Sleer took in the yawning wound in his gut, the crimson hollow, still seeping, cooling now and charred around the edges. Avon's hand remained knitted into Blake's shirt, gripping with almost inhuman strength.

"Separate them," she ordered. "Break his fingers if you have to."

One of the troopers stooped to pry Avon's fingers open, while Sleer turned to the other. "Who shot this man?" She asked, pointing at Blake. "Did anyone see who killed him?"

"Him." The trooper pointed at Avon. "He had his gun out when we came in, and this one at his feet." The trooper nudged Blake with is boot. "No one else could have done it."

Sleer felt something akin to awe glimmer to life in her chest, diffusing her with warmth.

A small groan escaped from Avon. His head titled slightly.

 _My God_. Her eyes widened with joy. _Only Avon_.

For the first time in what might have been ever, Sleer did something that would irretrievably ruin her dress. She knelt at the living man's side, drawing her hand along his cheek, turning his face towards her.

"Avon?" she breathed, her voice slipping into an intimate, knowing tone. His eyes fluttered open, unfocused. _So confused_. He seemed beyond anything tangible, even pain. "Oh, Avon."

It was almost reverent. His glazed eyes came to rest on hers, and something dim flicked through. Recognition perhaps? "I would have been disappointed if it had ended any other way."

His hand twitched, weakly scrabbling for something.

"Oh, no Avon, I'm afraid that's all over now. Your Blake is dead. He's mine. _You're_ mine. And I am going to reward you for serving me so well, in all of this."

Avon's eyes closed again, his head tilting back, away from her as far as he could. Blood ran in streaks across his face, but whether it was his own or Blake's no one knew, not even him.

"No, Avon, you can't die from wishing, I won't let you. Though I promise at first you'll pray for death. And then, you won't care. By the end I'll make you love me, just like everybody else."

Avon's breathing was shallow, but rhythmic. Life clung, even against his will.

Sleer ran long-nailed fingers through his sticky hair, thrilling at the waxy texture of his tender skin. She stood, turning to her personal guard.

"Get him to a resuscitation pod. If this man dies, you all die with him. Tell my personal physicians to leave him broken, but able to undergo torture. I want him to have visible reminders of this. The rest of you," She turned to the waiting men, shuffling on heavy-booted feet. "Their ship, the _Scorpio_ , where is it?"

A Squadron Leader stepped forward, singling himself out. "Sensors registered a crash site, Madam President, several miles away."

"Find it. Begin salvage operations immediately. I want everything stripped from the ship and moved to our laboratories at Space Central Command. And what about ORAC?"

A long silence followed.

"A computer!" She gestured the shape with her hands. "A personal computer. Visible interior? Far too much attitude?"

There was a chorus of shaking heads.

"Find it!" she snapped. "It's either on the ship, or hidden somewhere between there and this base." She turned furious eyes back down to the body at her feet. "Where is he, Avon? Where have you put him?"

It might have been a trick of the light, but she could swear she saw a faint smile flicker across his lips. It was too much. She pulled back and kicked him, kicked the smug smile right off his smug face. She regretted it at once, of course, realizing that all she had done was deliver him from his current suffering. His muscles sagged into unconsciousness, an un-responsive sleep, innocent as a bloody child, ignorant of future pain.

"What was Blake doing here?" Sleer said, smoothing her dress in an attempt to salvage the situation.

"It looks like he was recruiting." The Squadron Leader offered, gesturing around at the make-shift installation. "Our computer techs are cracking the encryption on their data files right now."

"Good, there'll be a list of names somewhere. Find them. I want everyone who had anything to do with Roj Blake hunted down and exterminated. Start on this planet, and work your way outward. As far out into the Galaxies as you need to go. Whatever resources you need will be supplied."

"Yes, Madam President."

The Federation wounded were ushered out into waiting shuttles. Rebel corpses from here and other parts of the captured building were dragged through the halls outside to be burned and forgotten.

Sleer took a deep breath, looking around at the shambles that was the true start of her new Empire, a new citadel, to be built on the bones and jointed with the soft flesh of the bodies littering the ground.

And Avon. Glorious, unattainable, devious Avon, hers to have and to hold and to do with as she pleased.

The final obstacles to her new everlasting Federation, all laying helpless and cold and bloody at her feet. She looked forward to the future, to the myths that would become truth, from mouth to ear on a thousand planets, and saw her own grand place in the story. With an long exhale she strode forward to meet it.


	2. So Full of Slumber

He woke slowly, sifting through levels of haze and muted awareness. His first conscious feeling was always confusion, followed by an anxious throb in his stomach. He opened his eyes into total blackness and the panic increased. Every morning was the same. He awoke convinced that he had gone blind. He took a few unsteady breaths, reminding himself that with the lights out the room was always unnaturally dark, at any time of the day. The sun never reached down this far into the lower levels of the dome apartment blocks, in any dome. The room was cold, the whir of the air circulators a monotonous comfort.

He swung himself into a sitting position, a groan escaping him without his consent. The sound was loud in the quiet, metallic room, and somehow pathetic.

"Lights, level one."

His voice, too, might have been a groan, deep and ill-used. As far as he knew he had never been one for talking to himself. He rubbed the back of his neck absently.

The room hummed into focus, sterile, orderly, subdued in colour and furnishings. His sleeping cubicle was small, only enough room for the single bed, night stand, and metal chair against the wall. A doorway led to an even smaller bathroom.

Limping into the bathroom he ordered the same low lighting there, sparing hardly a glance at the thin stranger in the mirror as he adjusted the water temperature in the shower. Barely-covered ribs made a washboard of his back as he leaned over. His body was cold and stiff, but there was nothing new in that. The drugs took care of the pain, and the memories no longer troubled him. He used to have nightmares, but the drugs took care of those too.

He stripped himself of his standard-issue Federation sleepwear and stepped inside the shower stall, letting the light garments drop to the floor unheeded. He would find them there tonight before getting back into bed. There was no one to complain about the mess but him, and he didn't care.

The spray was too hot, the smell of the soap nauseatingly familiar. Same substance for hair and face and body, a pale abrasive block. He washed his hair (too long, still brown), his beard (starting to grey), and ran his slicked hands quickly over the deep scars running around his right shoulder and hip, before moving on to the rest of him.

The fact that he couldn't remember how he had come by such ugly markings was something that he had purposely stopped considering. Self preservation outweighed curiosity. His body terrified him if he let himself think about it too much.

He tried to assign familiar images to the abused tissue. His shoulder, therefore, was a map of the first calendar Andes, with high silver peaks and purple valleys. His hip was a constellation of blistered stars, or the surface of the moon. His own Kepler Crater, next to his Mare Cognitum. _The Sea That Has Become Known._

He only had half movement in his right hand.

He limped.

No one cared. Least of all him. No one asked about it, and he was content to let it rest, assuming that whatever his life used to be, it was best that he no longer recognized it as part of himself. He never, _ever_ allowed himself to look into his own eyes in the mirror.

Breakfast he ate in his small kitchen, an alcove off the insignificant common room. Standard food concentrates. Standard issue coffee. Standardly black. He ate naked, letting himself dry, the cold touch of air on his wet skin probably the most thrilling sensation he would have until he slept again.

He wondered idly if it would be preferable to choke now, to save himself the rest of the standard day.

Every moment seemed its own field of Asphodel, crossed over and over and over. A land of utter neutrality.

He donned standard issue grey socks, pants, trousers, shirt, tunic. He did not lock the door behind him. He did not look back.

* * *

 _If not for our beloved President Sleer, wha_ _t a terrible and chaotic world this would be! Good citizens, let us at all times give thanks for her steadfast and just rule! Hers is the hand that holds back the Galactic Evil that would seek to destroy us, and nurtures life, wherever her touch bestows itself!_

The exterior loudspeakers never ceased their litany. A hollow metallic voice expounded on the virtues of the President at all hours of the day, expanding out from the speakers into the air like the rings in a pool around a dropped rock. Like most things in his life, he had learned to effectively tune it out, and hope that the President's touch never bestowed itself too close to him.

He continued on his listless way to work, surrounded by similarly engaged people. The paved streets were long and narrow, maintained with the same ruthless attention the Federation paid to anything that might dare preform at even one whit below it's perceived ability. He plodded in time with the sound of all the other footfalls. The recycled air here was never crisp. Even this early in the morning.

Concrete office blocks rose up on either side of the road, skirted by low grey walls, separating the foot traffic from the immaculately paved walkways leading into the buildings.

The main thoroughfare was also dotted with signage. He studiously ignored the printed messages reminding pedestrians what _All Good Federation Citizens_ did.

 _Obeyed the law._

 _Kept to a steady pace._

 _Worked for the good of the glorious Federated Worlds_.

He shuffled shoulder to shoulder with a hundred other grey-clad forms, all engaged in the same _glorious_ preoccupation, ignoring the loudspeakers that droned on and on.

As he passed the government regulated community park, his head remained down, lost in his own thoughts.

If he had spotted the two figures seated on the metal bench in the open paved area, he would not have noticed them, their pale, bland faces, nor that both their red heads tracked with him as he passed by.

* * *

Aza Flynn let her newssheet drop and rest a moment in her lap, eyes following along after him. She folded the paper into a small square and dropped it into the hip pocket of her tunic, motioning for the man beside her to follow as she stood, stretched her lean, strong arms, and fell into step several meters behind the limping figure. Her partner caught up with her and fell into step beside her, voicing a low and familiar _harrumph_. He jammed his hands into his trouser pockets, making sure his pace matched hers, and that no interest in his surroundings showed on his face.

"Which one?" His voice was low, despite the fact that no one walked abreast of them.

"Directly ahead. With the limp. They're calling him Chevron now."

Tagg Flynn's eyes flicked forward for moment, frowned, and then drifted back down to the ground in front of him. "You're sure?"

Aza shot him a sidelong glance. "Would I be taking the risk if I wasn't?"

Tagg stopped himself from laughing openly, but there was amusement in his voice when he replied, "oh, yes, you most certainly would."

He turned his head to make sure she caught the ironic look in his eye, but she was absorbed in watching the man in front of them. Her bright red hair was pulled away from her pale skin and twisted into a loose swirl on top of her head. Her face was delicate and vivid, but her quick green eyes remained dull most of the time, hiding her natural empathy and compassion. A dampened flame. Tagg had always thought secretly that she would benefit enormously from exposure to the sun. He wanted to see her burst into openness and bright colour. He had also always considered her much too thin, even compared to his own lengthy frame, but every time he dared mention _that_ to her she hit him.

He looked forward again, knowing it was always best policy not to act too lively. If one wanted to talk, one had to look bored.

Outside in the open was the safest place for talking. The buildings of industry, recreational centers, cafeterias, apartment complexes, underground shuttle system, all were monitored, not only with cameras, but with listening devices as well. Anywhere people walked or talked or worked or gathered. Even the places they slept.

Tagg already woke too many nights in a cold sweat, imagining audio monitoring chips sewed into his pillow, his clothing, under his skin. The network of Citizen Monitoring Equipment was far too vast to be watched at all times, but the network could record at all times. At all times and forever. Years and years of mundane working class Federation footage, stored on data crystals and ready for exhuming and tampering with, should ever the need arise.

So these brief but necessary movements from one area of the dome to the other were the only time one could be fairly certain there was no one listening. Just like in a first calendar story of murder and corruption, rebellion was discussed on park benches and in busy streets. Even then a drone might fly by. Any one of the men and women around them might be an employee of the Federation Security Bureau.

And in the middle of all of this, here was his smoldering Aza, dragging him out of his way from his morning shuffle to the munitions plant, to view this colourless Hephaestus in all his deformed glory, currently rubbing away absently at the back of his neck. The man ahead of them certainly didn't seem any different than the rest of them. If anything, a little more downtrodden. But Aza's eyes were hungry, drawing in every detail.

"Well…" Tagg started.

"Well, what?"

"Well… It's just that he reminds me of someone's shabby uncle."

Aza rolled her eyes. "I see. I'll be sure to mention that to him if we should ever chance to speak to one another."

"Now, now." Tagg let his shoulder brush briefly against his twin's. "My sister is a little too prone to anger, I think, for someone dutifully ingesting the full spectrum of required sedatives."

Aza shuddered. She had been eating non-federation food for over a year now, and the thought of the muzzy, brain slowing mixtures that everyone was made to consume on a daily basis still made her feel sick. It was hard to purchase the black-market food cubes, and even harder to slip them in instead of the provided nutrition, but she wouldn't go back for anything. Tagg was on the same diet now, and both of them had to pool their income to afford the dangerous luxury of un-medicated though.

She liked Tagg so much better without it. Of course, she loved him no matter what, but his wit was so much sharper, brighter, left to its own devices. She loved his short hair spraying fire in all directions, the dusting of freckles across the bridge of his long straight nose, standing out like a challenge to anyone who dared try to steal his inner brat. Her brother had square, strong hands, loose limbs, and an infinite amount of patience for her. She wished she could take him somewhere warm, if only to see exposure to natural heat melt all the tension out of his tight shoulders.

She let her shoulder brush his affectionately back, but her eyes never left the man making his inexorable way to work, pressing through the crowds like they weren't even there, looking at no one. She was amazed that he didn't turn, didn't seem to feel the weight of her stare on his back. In the background, the tin drone of the loudspeakers continued.

 _If your hearts cry out, Citizens, seek comfort in Sleer! She is the key of the day and the lock of the night. The great gift of her love is your reward. Work hard and be faithful even in the small things, for it is here that your faith is shown! May the victorious might of the Federation be your lodestar!_

"Alright," Tagg said, suddenly serious. "Let's dare to dream, shall we? Let's say this really is the mysterious and legendary Kerr-Upon-Avon that you've been hunting so desperately for. This scarecrow with a dramatic limp and obviously not enough brains to requisition a cane from Central Medical. What do we do about it?"

"I make contact with him."

"Assuming we get the go-ahead from Casimir."

"He'll have to let us. Now that we're sure it's Avon…"

" _You're_ sure, I'm still undecided."

"The Resistance needs hope to move forward. An injection of something new and exciting!"

Tagg sighed. "And you've decided that _this_ is the shabby uncle to supply just that excitement, have you?"

"I'm afraid so."

She hurried ahead, concerned that they should not be late for work. Tagg had to lengthen his stride to keep up with her.

"I know it's him," she pressed on, "I recognize him."

Tagg felt the deep pull of apprehension in his gut. "You're probably one of the last ones left who can. You and Thayer, anyway."

"Then you agree that we have to try at least?"

The path forked ahead of them, the left leading towards the Medical District, the right towards Central Command Center and the Security District. They would have to separate soon. Tagg watched as Hephaestus (as he now found himself calling this might-be Avon), angled to the right.

"And if he says no?" he said.

Aza simply shook her head. "Who could say no to this face?"

Tagg rolled his eyes and tried again. "Aza. What if he should decide instead to mention us to his new Federation keepers?"

He watched his sister's jaw tighten. She veered away on the left-hand track, tossing her parting words over her shoulder as she went. "Then we can take comfort from the fact that they can only kill us once."

Tagg continued to the right, towards Central Command. Beyond, many blocks and one shuttle ride away was the Industrial Sector. If he hurried, he had just enough time to catch the next train. He glanced once more at the object of all his sister's hopes, now in the act of yanking open the main door to one of the Command Computer Laboratories, waiting lamb-docile as several people pushed through the doorway ahead of him.

"Really?" Tagg said, before he looked away, letting himself be swept along anonymously in the morning foot traffic.

* * *

The man who might have been Kerr Avon was long gone. In his place another man, someone named Chevron, stood instead. Chevron was a Computer Analyst Level One. He worked in a wing of the East block of physical plant, a building connected through a series of underground tunnels to the Terran Central Command Headquarters. It was impossible to gain access to the Central Command complex through any of these tunnels. It was one-way access only, and security was extreme.

In layman's terms, he was one of the many technicians responsible for maintaining the temperature in the Command Block. Heating, air conditioning, air humidity. All controlled through computers with only the most rudimentary link-up to the main system. Each terminal was isolated, and unable to gain even partial access to any other system of the Federation's massive information system.

The real Central Command still occupied its high security space station off-planet. Central Command on Earth, as on all other Federated worlds, took care of the hands-on business of day-to-day management. Court cases were almost all tried on earth, and punishment meted out accordingly.

Chevron made his way through identical row upon row of computer terminals, the buffed plass walls reflecting back the florescent overhead lights and throwing a sickly pallor on the entire room. Third century of the second calendar, and _Those Who Mattered_ were still torturing their employees with florescent lighting.

The floor as well was covered in a colourless tile. Security cameras were positioned from the ceiling in the center of each row, swiveling up and down to catch the various technicians clacking keys, adjusting tired bodies in uncomfortable chairs.

Chevron often though that the only one worse off than him was the poor bastard who had to waste his life reviewing those tapes.

He eased his body slowly down into his chair, calling up his information screen without really paying attention. Repair requests, inter-office directives, routine testing schedules for the basement of the Command Block. The air conditioners ran constantly in that area, as the data crystals stored there needed a constant temperature. Still, if something should go wrong, there were a myriad of back-up systems. At no point and in no way could Chevron have any real influence on anything important. He could only pass information along to someone higher up, with more access.

He reviewed the current repair orders to be implemented. It promised to be a long and boring day. _A forest dark_ , he mused, _for the straightway path had been lost._

His hip already ached from the walk to work. He felt movement beside him, the brush of fabric against his leg as his neighbor in the cubicle next to him returned to her seat, carrying two cups of coffee. One of which she passed to him.

"I don't know how you can stand this stuff without anything in it," she sighed.

Karin Walker was a middle-aged professional lonely-person, somewhat lacking in social niceties, but with an abundant supply of acerbic remarks for anyone who cared to listen. She had been sitting next to Chevron for as long as he had worked here (which, for all he knew, could have been his entire existence), and every morning she brought him the same half-full cup of coffee, along with her own heavily doctored one. Why she went to the trouble of putting any of the acrid black liquid in with her synthesized cream and sugar was beyond him.

He grunted in thanks and took a sip. Not quite stone cold. How exciting.

"One doesn't pollute the Lethe with synth-cream," he muttered, setting the cup down beside his terminal and calling up a repair schematic for one of their common air conditioning units. His hands often completed these tasks without the benefit of his brain having to intervene. What he knew of the workings of computers was minimal. They operated at his touch, but his understanding of them was flawed, somehow full of gaps. He found them dull and meaningless.

He rubbed at the back of his neck. Tight already. And he was overwarm. He shifted angrily, and caught Karin's lopsided smile in his direction.

"Frustrated? This early?" she intoned.

"Just trying to deal with all the euphoria being here makes me feel," he deadpanned back at her.

"Is that why you so often liken it to having tartar?"

"Tartarus," he corrected. "I often liken it to _Tartarus_. As far beneath the earth as the earth beneath the sky." He caught her annoyed scowl at him. "Fine. If I called it a vile pit even lower than _Hell_ , would that be clear enough for you?"

"Oh, yes. That I can work with." She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. "Perhaps a slight modification to your posture would help. Just looking at you is giving me back-ache."

"Hmm. I was hoping it would be migraine today. We had sympathetic back-ache yesterday."

She shook her head, and looked up at the camera facing down on them. A frown flashed across her face before she turned her attention back to what she was typing. He was surprised when she spoke in an undertone to him a few minutes later. "Chevron…?"

"Hmmm?"

"Have you ever noticed our security camera?"

"I choose not to."

He heard her fingers stop, and after a moment he looked over at her. She was still, looking at him inquisitively, the whites of her eyes a soft dirty china ring around pale blue irises.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Nothing." She turned back to her terminal, then gave a single static laugh. "I believe we have achieved our allotted amount of verbal stimulation for this morning."

"Have we?" He allowed himself the rare treat of feeling fondness towards another human. It was only Karin, after all. No one would ever have to know.

"Must save _something_ for the cafeteria," she said. "Coffee. Computers. Migraines. Classical first calendar references. Wherever you get them from."

"Your guess is as good as mine."

"Right, but with those already exhausted, what will we talk about at lunch?"

He chuckled as he turned back to his own terminal, glancing briefly at the security camera floating above their heads, noting only that it was the same as always, trained coldly down on them, silent and unblinking.

* * *

If the buildings housing the Division of Mental Alteration and Conditioning had windows, Aza would have been staring out one right now. Her mind drifted listlessly as she stared at one of the alteration machines instead. Something about the slick silver equipment surrounding the reclining chair lulled her, caught the lights and danced them hypnotically before her eyes. She could never look at one without remembering her own experiences in one such machine.

Her conditioning had been relatively non-invasive. The regulation blocks on aggression, anti-social behavior, the extra conditioning necessary to achieve the required security clearance to work on the premises.

Almost every Federation Citizen was conditioned at some point in their lives. Alpha children were conditioned before attending their first days of school. Gammas and Deltas whenever they could be caught. It was worst for the Beta classes. Alphas of high intelligence were often spared most of the heavy tampering, and steered instead towards jobs in security, analysis, planning, as she herself had been. Tagg as well, but his aptitude for weapons engineering had kept him out of the FSA. They refused to risk such a fertile brain on any kind of military accident. So Tagg designed the bombs and blasters that others had the dubious joy of actually using.

Gammas were mostly steered into the antisocial trades; sewer and road maintenance, pest control, anything highly dangerous and barley paid. Deltas were considered too menial to waste the time on. They were designated labour grade, but mostly left to run wild, and only underwent severe alteration if they displayed too much independent behavior, or a tendency to follow socially unacceptable pursuits.

The Betas though, well, the were the first calendar equivalent of the white and blue-collar work force combined. They were given the full treatment. A Beta could work anywhere from garbage processing to systems analyst and everything in between. They were kept out of the higher echelons, but allowed wherever labour was needed almost anywhere else. Because of this, almost no independent will was left to them. They were fully operational of course. Many of them didn't even fully comprehend how deep their mental reprogramming went, but Aza knew.

She assisted with such things everyday. And once she and her colleagues were done, even the slightest suggestion of a disobedient thought was enough to bring the unfortunate Beta screaming in pain to their knees.

The door opened behind her, and a gurney wheeled in between two attendants. Beta class, of course. She smiled. Once their package was delivered the Betas turned and left. Doctor Thayer and his second assistant, and man named Dent, entered a moment later. Thayer was large and well-fleshed. A stubborn set to his jowly face. He hardly looked the role of the Federation's top re-programmer. They kept him here on earth so that he could teach at the FSA in addition to running the most efficient re-programming center on the planet. He was called to the Central Command Station for any difficult cases that they encountered, and Aza, as his former student and current assistant, was in the enviable position of having access to some of the most important cases the Federation had to offer.

It was a position that had not come easily. She was a brilliant Alpha specimen in her own right, but her drive and work ethic though the program had been unparalleled. Thayer made no secret of his intention to promote her into the position of head of her own re-programing team as soon as a spot became available. Dent was there to take her place. He was thin and bespectacled, hollow of cheek and eye socket. She considered him as many do when considering their own replacements. Hardly at all.

Aza roused herself fully from her reverie and crossed to the gurney, picking up the datapad left resting on the patient's thigh and scanning his vitals and history. A Delta class, this one, caught stealing.

"Behavioral re-assignment?" she asked.

Thayer shook his head. "Full wipe. This is his third offence. Obviously the memory blocks don't work with this one. We'll do a full removal and they'll schedule him for an off-planet assignment to one of our mining colonies. We can't keep wasting valuable time and resources on Deltas."

Aza nodded, trying not to look the Delta too closley. She could tell he was young, his pink face innocent-looking and dazed, unshaven and bruised around the mouth from standard Federation rough-handling. She swallowed a large lump in her throat. Dent rounded the gurney and helped her lift the Delta into a standing position. He was sedated, but not unconscious, and was able to stumble between them over to the waiting chair.

Dent began to attach the restraints, and then the monitoring pads to his forehead and exposed chest while Aza moved the headgear into place and prepared the injections that would be necessary to aid the process. It would be a fairly simple procedure, short in duration. A basic level mind wipe took only minutes, crashing through the system and obliterating everything in it's path. The subject was lucky if they could even remember how to walk afterward. Not all procedures went so swiftly.

Aza kept her back to the room as the face of another man came back to her now, mouth open, screams of pain and defiance echoing off the walls. The wounds on his shoulder and leg had still not been healed then, and she remembered how his struggles had split the newly grafted skin, soaking his drab regulation jumpsuit and the floor in bright blood. That session had lasted for weeks, starting on the Command Station, moving back down here to Earth for the final stages.

He had resisted with an almost superhuman bloody-mindedness, but no one lasted forever. They had pried open the heavily defended mind to twist and re-form the pathways of thought, pull apart memories, rob him of anything comforting and familiar.

Aza could still remember the names of the people he had cursed; as well as the people he had cried out to for release. People already long-dead and incinerated. People forever incapable of forgiveness. By the end she had come to see the wipe as an act of mercy to him. That had been before her own experience with the machine.

She looked again at the Delta laying strapped into his chair, wide eyes darting from one to the other. The stink of fright came off him in waves. Aza stifled the urge to vomit. Of all the things that would give away her new lack of conditioning, that would be the worst. To admit that she felt sorry for these…people. The fact that she even thought of them as people was dangerous.

No, best to keep her eyes on the injectors she was filling. Doctor Thayer would handle this one, with all the delicacy of a bulldozer, and when the Delta was broken an sobbing, Thayer would leave her to the fine tuning. She would leave Dent to the mopping up.

She took another hard swallow and turned to the task at hand.

* * *

The cafeteria was brightly lit and kept quite purposefully cold. This discouraged lingering after meals had been consumed. Chevron forced down another mouthful of tepid coffee and stretched his back. His vertebrae cracked in series as he straightened up, trying to ease the pain in his lower lumbar.

"You have crumbs caught in your beard," Karin informed him. He started slightly. He had forgotten she was sitting next to him. She had been unusually quiet for the last forty minutes. He idly brushed his hand across the lower portion of his face, wondering why he always envisioned her plump frame wrapped up in a soft cardigan. Something with cats on, perhaps.

The cafeteria was only half full, and they had one of the long tables to themselves. Karin rested her head on her hand and glanced around, then back at him. "Do you ever attend any community activities?"

"Community…?"

"Activities. Vid-casts? Group exercise? The Teal-Vandor Convention? I hear it's the most excitement you can have with your clothes on -"

"Anywhere in the galaxy," he finished, unaware how that thought had come to him. He shrugged and shook his head. "No."

" _No_ , you never do those things, or _no_ you don't think the Teal-Vandor Convention is exciting?"

"Either. I don't do them, and I don't find any of them exciting."

"Hobbies? Hidden talents?"

"Hardly."

"First name?"

He swallowed hard. Why did she have to ask that? He had no idea what his first name was. How pathetic. And sad. "On file," he said as blithely as he was able. "Why the sudden interest?"

"It's not sudden. I've been wondering about you for a while now. I just felt particularly garrulous today. As you can see, it's worked out a treat. I'm finding out so much about you."

He gave her a frown. "And what is it exactly that you're trying to find out?"

"I'm a voyeur, darling. I'll settle for anything."

He opened his mouth to reply, but she put up her hand to stop him, continuing on without pausing. "Actually, I want to know why the security camera that monitors our row never moves."

"What are you talking about? Every row has a security monitor."

"Yes, but they all sweep up and down. Cost saving, I'm sure. The one above our row never moves. It's always focused in our direction. Now, I'd love to flatter myself that I'm important enough for constant monitoring, but somehow I don't think so. So today I'm wondering if you can tell me what's so important about you?"

Chevron thought a moment, but shook his head. It sounded like a malfunction to him.

"Nothing. I'm an open book. This is all there is."

Karin gave him a quick appraising glance that he actually had to work hard not to squirm under, and then went back to her coffee. "Then you have my sympathies."

* * *

Throughout the afternoon Chevron cast the occasional glance at the security camera above him. True, it never moved, but there was nothing nefarious in that. The only thing that disturbed him was, with the haste most malfunctions were fixed around here, how long this one had gotten by. He made a mental note to send a repair request to head office before shutting down his terminal at the end of the day

* * *

Aza stood shivering against the high stone wall that skirted the waste disposal plant. It sat in a section of the city surrounded by other reeking industrial buildings, textile manufactures, tool and dye, food supplement processing. Like the historical lay-out of first calendar London, the unsavory or offensive trades had been relegated to the outskirts of the dome.

Here the alleys stank of human waste and chemical cast-offs. Thick acrid smoke rolled overhead and slick unnamed liquid deposits squelched underfoot. The cameras here were farther between, and the resident Deltas did their best to smash them down as soon as they were put up.

It never rained under the domes, but occasionally, as tonight, a fine mist hovered, sprayed in to keep the air moist enough to breath comfortably.

Aza skirted the wall to where a small grated tunnel opened from it, allowing the sluiced waste-water from the plant to pass out of the yard and into a series of gutters. These gutters ran parallel for a few hundred feet and then joined, entering a small tunnel that angled underground, passed through three automated security checks along the way, and emptied unheeded in the no-man's-land outside the dome.

No one without proper security clearance went outside. The original underground cell of the Resistance had made this mistake. Their meetings had been held in abandoned buildings outside the dome itself. The risk of detection upon leaving and re-entering was too high.

This latest idea for a meeting place had been Tagg's. The munitions plant was not far from here, and his familiarity with the area had immediately suggested it to him as the perfect place to find an unexpected kind of shelter.

Aza ducked into the low tunnel, careful to keep out of the light of the occasional street-lamps. Her hands and knees dipped into the waste water as she went. Once inside the dim tunnel, she could half-stand, half-crouch and make her way several more hundred feet until she encountered a small scratch mark on one of the cinder-block walls. A panel swung inwards when she pressed on it.

Once inside this second tunnel there was room to stand up. The floor was packed earth, the walls supported every few feet with stolen lumber.

"An escape route from a prison vid," Tagg always enthused, "or a bank heist." Trust him to come up with something like that.

The secondary tunnel cut through a few meters of earth and then, through another hidden door, gave access to an underground waste filtration system, a largish-cinderblock room mostly taken up with colour-coded pipes and pumping mechanisms. The air was filled with the constant low hum of fluid passing through turbines, sluice screens, and catchment basins. The room was automated, and accessible from the surface only through a heavily secured waste management building.

Aza, like Tagg, felt a certain thrill at the irony of the Resistance meeting behind a door secured by Federation locks and codes, in a Federating room, in a Federation building.

"Like rats nibbling their way in from the sewer," Tagg had laughed, when first showing them around. "And as long as they don't know we're here, there's no reason for them to set out traps for us."

Off this main room they had dug a second room, hidden like the tunnel entrance by a swinging section of wall. In here there were a few beds, a table, and enough food and water to last several people a week or more. The construction of all of this had happened quietly, in stages, and largely thanks to Tagg, who's engineering training and background in demolition was invaluable.

When Aza arrived, everyone was already there. All seven of them. A few lanterns had been lit, and she took a spot perched next to Tagg on a wide humming piece of pipe. Next to her on the other side sat Levin Bril, the rebellion's newest recruit, and the first spark of hope Aza had felt in a long time. Bril was a Security Systems Officer for Central Command. An underling, really, but an underling with computer access. Aza gave him a gentle squeeze on the shoulder to say hello. He smoothed a comically small hand over his balding head and smiled a welcome back.

Casimir was standing before them, waiting for her to settle before beginning. Their leader was a thick, shaggy man, with yellowing eyebrows and a thick curly mane of hair. He pinned Aza with a quiet stare before gesturing for her to fill him in.

He did not raise his head from his chest until almost an hour later, having listened to Aza's report, her suggestions, and the thoughts of the small group of other people in the room. His blunt finger played thoughtfully with his lower lip. His voice was a deep rumble.

"I think it's a very dangerous suggestion."

"But what other choice do we have?" Aza tried not to sound so desperate, but she couldn't believe she had come this close to something so monumental and then might have it brushed aside.

"As far as I am aware," Casimir continued, holding up a creased palm in a way that managed to be consoling and dismissive at the same time, "we are the last members of the Resistance that exist on this planet. I have not received a message from Avalon in over a year's time, and the last one I did informed me that her numbers were dwindling. Kasabi is dead, any and all other cells we were in touch with are silent. Self preservation is of paramount concern now. Guada Prime was a deathblow to our cause. We lost all our heroes that day, and none have risen to take their place."

"We lost all but one," Aza corrected.

"And what a one," Bril sighed. "I mean, Kerr Avon. Might as well try to make a deal with the Devil. Couldn't we start off a little easier? Del Grant, or Ro, or someone along those lines?"

"Kerr Avon _is_ a murderer," Casimir interrupted, an irrefutable and immovable object. The act of explanation just seemed to gather more power to him. "He is a depraved and evil man, and the fact that he is still alive proves it. I don't see how seeking his assistance could be anything but suicidal on our parts."

"Really?" Aza was not one to be intimidated easily. Tagg hid his smile in his clenched fist, listening to her escalating voice. "We are talking about the one man who understands how ORAC works. Not to mention the teleport system. And the Plaxton Drive. And the Anti-Detection Shield. Stop me when I start to bore you."

"Aza…" Casimir warned.

"Kerr Avon was the single most powerful weapon the Resistance ever had. And he's here. Working in a computer complex not six blocks away from Central Command. I _saw_ him today. I could have reached out and touched him."

"But if it is him," Tagg put in quietly, "then we both know he's been wiped clean. Besides being three years older and one beard richer than he was when they caught him, he'll have none of the memories and none of the skills to make him useful to us. The fact that the Federation would let him within a mile of a computer testifies to that."

"But that's just it, I can restore those memories. I've done it to myself, I can do it to him."

"If you can gain access to the facility without bringing the whole bloody system down on your head," a voice grumbled behind her. Aza tossed an angry look over her shoulder, identified the voice as Sher Waitstill, and gave him a withering glare.

She grasped Bril by the shoulder, and pulled him slightly forward into the conversation. He resisted with the air of the last kid picked for the soccer team, not sure if he should be relieved or embarrassed. "With Bril to disrupt the monitoring system, I can handle the rest. I know my way in and out of the psychoanalytic wing. I use those machines on a daily basis. No one has a better chance than me."

"And if he doesn't agree?" Casimir asked.

"He's a man, isn't he?" Bril put in. "If Aza asks him, he'll agree."

Tagg narrowed his eyes at the Security System's Officer. Bril had the decency to blush.

"We'll convince him," Aza cut in.

"We cannot adopt the same tactics as the Federation." Casimir was firm.

"Fine, but we can't be idle either. The Resistance on this planet is in danger of turning into a…" She dug for the word, and then turned quickly on Tagg. "What was it you called it the other day? Something spherical?"

Tagg looked like he was going to choke, but spat it out anyway. "A circle-jerk."

Casimir's face darkened, but he did not reply. Flynn did tend to favor the first calendar terms.

"Exactly," Aza plowed on, uninterested in such puritanical blushes. "Stroking ourselves with no other aim than to make ourselves feel important. We need to move, to do something, to be able to recruit on a larger scale, supply ourselves with arms, get away from here to a place were we can talk and plan in safety."

"And where will we be getting the resources for all this?" Casimir looked at her like she was a child. The look she gave back to him was anything but childish.

"Has it also escaped all your memories that Kerr Avon is the man who nearly pulled off the largest banking fraud in Federation history? Five million credits. Think what we could do with even half that sum."

Not to be outdone, Casimir replied in an acid tone. "I believe _nearly_ might be the most important word of that sentence."

"Exactly. I expect he would be highly motivated to do it right the second time around."

"You're insane." Waitstill muttered.

"Hang on," Tagg held up his hand. "There is something else we need to consider here," he continued on in spite of the surprised looks his interruption earned him. "Can we really move ahead with this in good conscience?"

"Explain." Aza said.

"Certainly. He's been tortured. At great length. Who knows what Sleer did to him once she got her hands on him. The woman is daily re-defining the uttermost boundaries of psychopathic behavior. He's been betrayed, manipulated, broken and left to rot. He would be, quite frankly, one of the most hated and feared people alive today besides Sleer herself. If any of the other rebel groups are alive, and they get their hands on him, it will be as good as sentencing him to a burning at the stake. We're talking about the man who killed Roj Blake, lost the _Liberator_ , ORAC, and every other useful weapon the Resistance ever had. There are certain areas of the Delta section that have _still_ not taken down their mourning wreaths for Villa Restal.

"If Gauda Prime was the deathblow, then we have to admit that it was Kerr Avon who delivered it. He wouldn't last ten seconds off-world. The only reason he's made it this far is because every free-thinking being in the known universe thinks he died with the rest of his crew."

"And if you'd been mind-wiped?" Aza asked coolly. "Wouldn't you want the option to get yourself back, if you could?"

Tagg took a firm hold on her shoulders. "Yes. I would. But then, I have a devoted sister." He gave her a slight good-natured shake. "I would kill anyone who tried to take you away from me. But think about this, please. Kerr Avon is a dangerous man, even if he doesn't know it. He is an embezzler, traitor, mercenary, and murderer. You're volunteering yourself to be the one to try and control his behavior _after_ you help him remember that everything he ever did in life failed, that his entire family was killed because of him, that all his friends and loved ones are dead, most of them at his own hand, and that the only reason he is alive right now is as a toy for Sleer, to remind her on a daily basis that she won, and that the glorious Federation is the most powerful force in the universe, and she it's only commander. Can you actually tell me it wouldn't be better to leave him exactly as he is?"

Aza seemed to still for a moment, but it passed quickly. The flame leapt up again and she gave her brother a smack on the shoulder. "Then let him pay back what he owes us. Blake wouldn't want us to let his death be in vain."

Tagg released her and rubbed his tired eyes. "And that will comfort you through his screams, will it?"

"I've never been one to let screams bother me very much."

Tagg looked startled by that, but kept his mouth shut. He knew enough to know when to let her lie to him.

Casimir dropped his chin onto his chest for a moment. "I have to think about this. Leave it with me. For a little while at least. We've already all been out of our homes far too long. I'll send a signal in the usual way when I'm ready with an answer for you."

The others got up and left one by one. Bril gave Aza a supportive smile before he slipped away.

Aza and Tagg went out together, regaining the dim street on their hands and knees one after the other. Tagg turned to hurry the opposite direction from his sister, sending her a warning look.

To his dismay, she didn't catch it. She was already walking the other way, head down, hands in her pockets, disappearing quickly in the jumbled alleys that made up the Industrial Section.

Aza glanced up through the mist at the buildings overhead. A shiver of apprehension slid deliciously through her, and she recited under her breath.

' _After my weary body I had rested,_

 _The way resumed I on the desert slope,_

 _So that the firm foot ever was the lower.'_

As much as Casimir might want time to think, she knew it had already started, some action set in motion now that there was no turning back from, and that finally, she felt completely and utterly at a loss to resist.

* * *

In the very spacious and luxurious Presidential Office on the Space Central Command Station, Sleer sat behind an unnecessarily imposing desk. The day was proceeding in a routine manner, and so, in keeping with tradition, as she had a moment or two between meetings and no interest in paperwork at the moment, her hand slid to a panel of buttons just underneath the desk-top on her right-hand side.

A small panel moved aside in front of her, and a vid-screen slid into position. She punched in the appropriate channel.

It was a simple, static view of a man, bearded, hunched over a computer terminal, tapping away, his face blank, his muscles tense and painful. She watched the crisp colourless image of him as he rubbed the back of his neck with his fully working hand. Her smile widened when she considered that there was no one left alive who could tell anyone why she was so constantly delighted by this image. Why she used it to cheer herself on the boring or depressing days, or how the very sight of that neutral, somehow lost face gave her such a triumphant thrill that she could feel it all the way down into the pit of her stomach. Lower, really, when she thought about it. Somewhere lower and more elemental. It succored her. It was better than food, wine, sex, or intrigue. It was pure power, and the sight of him satisfied her powerfully.

She settled in to watch.


	3. The Deep and Savage Way

"I don't like this plan," Tagg grumbled.

"Why? It's direct, not lacking in simplicity…" Aza replied, shifting her position on the metal bench so that she could bend down and sweep up a few more pebbles into her pockets, her newssheet spread forgotten on her lap.

"Wouldn't it be better to wait for Casimir?"

"I've given him enough time to figure all this out. He's stalling."

"Aza, it's not really up to _you_ to 'give him time'. It's his choice about when to respond to _us_."

"Did Bril get the tracking monitor to you?"

Tagg was about ready to throttle her. "Yes," he said through a tightened jaw. "And he wants it back as soon as possible. There's a danger someone might notice it's missing."

"I'll have it back to you tomorrow." She held her hand out for the small electronic box, and Tagg slipped it into her hand, watching it disappear into her pocket.

"Alright," she said. "I'll take it from here."

"Like hell you will. I'm not leaving you alone with him. If Kerr Avon is anywhere within a hundred-yard radius of you I'm going to be there. With a loaded weapon."

He drew something else out of his pocket, flashing it at her still nestled into his palm. A laser probe. Aza laughed once. "That's a little more than mildly disconcerting. Besides, I already have my own." She flashed him a similar probe, produced from one of her many tunic pockets. Tagg sighed and slid his away again.

"Listen," he said, "I see anything even remotely dangerous, and I will kill that hoary limping _bastard_ without a second's though. Understood?"

She blinked at him. "Understood."

They sat for a moment on the bench together, not looking at each other. Finally, his hand crept over hers and gave it a squeeze. She squeezed back. "He'll be along soon. Better make yourself scarce."

He glared at her.

"I meant concealed," she put in quickly. With a sigh, he got up and left.

* * *

Chevron was preoccupied. The exterior loudspeakers droned on in the background. It had been a full week now since he had first noticed that the security camera above him was broken, and still it remained unfixed.

He had issued two inter-office requests, then informed his superior personally. And yet, the camera remained immobile. Despite his best efforts, a certain paranoia had begun to settle. Nothing in any of the complexes around Command Block ever went unfixed for an entire week after being brought to the appropriate people's attention.

Chevron was starting to allow himself to think that perhaps the camera was not supposed to move. And if it really was purposefully immobile, then it followed that it was trained on something specific. Namely, him. Unless Karin Walker was a lot more interesting than…

Something hit him in the leg, leaving a sharp sting. He almost stumbled, pulling up short, looking left and right. There was nothing around that might have jumped up at him. He shook it off. Perhaps someone had kicked a rock in his direction accidentally. He continued, but a second later another missile caught him in the bicep. This time he came to a full stop, his head coming up to scan around the area. He saw no-one who seemed interested enough to throw anything. They were all occupied as he was, getting themselves home after a long day at work.

A movement caught his eye. A second later a small pebble bounced off his chest.

That was going to leave a mark.

He focused in on where he had seen the brief flash of motion.

It was a woman, seated on a bench in the communal area, reading a newssheet.

Surely not.

He was about to forget the whole thing and carry on, when she suddenly looked over the top edge of her newssheet at him and smiled provocatively. He stared in amazement, as she pulled back under his very eye and hurled another rock at him.

It hit him, glancing this time off his abdomen.

Right.

He started towards her, hesitant at first. She had returned to her newssheet. He paused when he reached her, suddenly at a loss for words. She did not look up. Finally, he cleared his throat. "Excuse me?"

The newssheet drifted down. A fraction of an inch. Green eyes, he noted. Quiet lovely, but defiant. Mocking him.

"Do we know each other?" he asked.

"I don't believe so." Her voice was deeper than he expected compared to the rest of her delicate self.

"But you _were_ throwing rocks at me."

"Most definitely."

"Why?"

"So that we could _get_ to know one another." The newssheet dropped completely and she gestured to the empty spot on the bench beside her.

"I don't understand," he said.

"Are you going to let that stop you?"

He glanced around again, but no one seemed to be paying them any mind. In the end, it was her smile that did it. It bent his knees enough for him to sink down onto the bench beside her. _Well_ , he thought. _Susceptible to a pretty girl_. _With above average aim_. He found that somehow comforting.

She was watching him, and her scrutiny seemed to miss nothing. He felt an absurd impulse to tell her anything she wanted to know. If only to confirm that she knew it all about him already. Or at least that was the impression she was giving. Like he could do or say anything, and it would be accepted with less than a quirk of those finely arched eyebrows.

Aza noted the new frown lines etched into his face. The scar below his chin was deeper. There was a certain blankness in the depths of eyes that had been full of fire and hate last time they had met hers. He looked younger, thinner; lost. Frightfully alone.

She took a small flask of something out of one of her tunic pockets and unscrewed the top, taking a sip. She offered it to him. "It's called Soma. Interested?"

He waved the flask away. "No, thank you. May I ask who you are?"

"Certainly. My name is Aza Flynn." She held out her hand, and he found himself grasping it. She had a very warm hand. Very soft.

"Chevron," he said, almost an afterthought.

"Pleased to meet you Chevron. Fancy a walk?"

"Uh…"

"We have so much to discuss."

"We do?"

* * *

 _Whatever the question, Sleer is the answer, whatever the hurdle, Sleer the fulcrum enabling movement. In Sleer there is unity, and in unity, the strength to overcome any obstacle. Let your faith in the President be your comfort, your reason for striving. We are the flesh this glorious Federation is build on, the children who will carry forward all our traditions of excellence, our blood the serum of humanity's everlasting existence in our rightful place amongst the stars._

The streets had all but emptied of people, and still they wandered side by side. Aza kept her pace deliberately slow, not wanting to draw attention to his limp. For his part, Chevron made certain not to allow his uneven gait to cause his shoulder to brush against hers.

"Not even your own first name?" Aza asked again.

Inevitably, their conversation had come to rest on his lack of memory. He had expected it, of course, It was a wound that stayed open with constant worrying, but he wished that it wasn't so. His hip was aching terribly, his back and neck tight, but he didn't want to stop. Absurdly, he realized that he didn't want her to perceive him as physically weak. Well, weaker than he must already seem. Pride was not something he could really afford, but it rankled with him now. He didn't want her pity.

"And that doesn't bother you?" she pressed on, interrupting his musing.

He gave her a half-shrug. "I'm sure it's on file somewhere."

"Oh," she laughed. "Well, in that case."

He stuffed his hands into his tunic pockets. She noted the action, and held out a hand to him sideways, not breaking their pace. "It's getting cold, isn't it? Here, will you hold my hand?"

He glanced down at her offered palm. "Well, I…"

"It'll look better for the cameras."

"Cameras?" Oh. He had forgotten about the ubiquitous surveillance cameras. "And why should that matter?"

"Because, if, at some point in the future, someone askes what we talked about today, it will be easier to say we were simply enjoying each other's company if there are some physical signs to verify it."

"I see. And what are we going to talk about, then?"

"I'm about to tell you your name. The real one I mean, not whatever false one you've got on file."

He stopped walking. Her hand remained extended. His shoulders rose and fell. He suddenly longed for trees with leaves to rustle, birdsong, water running. Something natural to break the unnatural silence. Anything but the constant drone of the loudspeakers, with their tin promises of glory, and unity, and empty strength.

Trust was the only true strength, he realized, and he didn't possess it.

She reached out and took his hand instead. His right one, and they continued to walk together. What with the tissue damage, he could hardly feel her grip at all, and he supposed that helped.

On Aza's part, she was shocked at how large his hands were. They looked proportionate to him, and therefore unremarkable, but they engulfed her smaller ones completely. They were hotter than she expected as well, and deft. She glanced down and noted the blunt square-tipped fingers, dexterous and round-knuckled. Thick veins meandered under the tender skin on the backs, saving them from looking rough, and instead adding a sense of masculinity that counteracted the arch lines of his face.

"You must at least have guessed that something was done to you," she said, pulling her eyes up to his face again. "No one goes through life a complete blank without noticing something is amiss. No memories of friends, or parents, or childhood. No name, Chevron? It must be hell for you."

His breathing was becoming ragged. "I…I assumed that if I couldn't remember anything before three years ago it was better that way."

"Yes, but better for whom? _Who_ benefits from you remembering absolutely nothing?"

"Me." He was shocked at the lack of conviction in his own voice. "I have…well, you see, I assumed because of certain _markings_ , that…"

"That it would be something too traumatic to want to remember? You're not the only one with scars, you know."

His flesh prickled with cold. A numb sensation crept up the back of his neck, causing him to stop. She was jerked to a standstill with him, having been unprepared for the cease in forward movement.

"How did you know about those?"

"Oh, that's nothing. I know a lot more about you than that. They're blaster burns, by the way. In case you weren't sure."

His anxiety continued to rise. "How do you know that?"

"The one on your shoulder a series of long lines? The one on your hip more like pitting in old metal?"

He pulled his hand away from hers, bringing it to his forehead. He was shaking terribly, becoming more and more lightheaded.

Aza took a firm hold on his shoulder. "It's alright. Try to stay calm. It's just a panic attack. Here, come sit down."

She guided him over to a low concrete wall running along beside the street. She took the flask out of her hip pocket again and handed it to him.

"Drink it. little sips. It'll help."

His fingers scrabbled for the container, drinking in small breathless gulps. Something sickly sweet and sticky spread across his tongue. He was surprised, looking at the small streak of liquid left around the mouth of the flask when he pulled it away from his lips, that it was bright green.

"Tell me how you know," he said.

"Would you like to know your real name?"

" _No_." He snapped it too quickly.

Her face remained impassive as she nodded back down to the flask. "Keep drinking."

He did. A tiny flame of warmth was spreading through his belly. Whatever Soma was, it was strong. And calming. He became aware that she had run her fingers through his hair, pushing it away from his sweaty forehead.

"I won't hurt you," she told him.

He took another swallow and nodded his consent, so slight he hoped she wouldn't see it.

She did. "You were a convicted criminal."

He waited. She seemed prepared to grant him whatever length of time he needed.

"I was a violent man, then?" he asked. _Dammit_. Questions implied belief. And he did _not_ believe this.

She hesitated, and then decided the truth was best. "Not at first. You were convicted of a rather famous bank fraud."

She kneaded the back of his neck, warmth passing from her hand into his tender skin, clammy with cold sweat. He noted ruefully that it was working. He felt his heart-rate decrease.

He handed the flask back. "Go on, if you must."

"On the way to a prison planet called Cygnus Alpha, a group of prisoners were able to escape the transport ship onto a Deep Space Vessel of unknown origin. It was called the _Liberator_. I assume Blake named it."

"Jenna," he corrected quickly.

"Jenna Stannis?"

"Who?" His face was blank.

She handed the flask back to him. "For the next four years you were very important to the Resistance. Your group was the only one that came even close to overcoming the Federation."

"And why would anyone want to do a thing like that?"

"Because the Federation is evil. Genocide and whole-sale enslavement are only a few of the reasons."

He laughed dryly, conscious of a touch of hysteria in it.

She gave him a benign look. "Just because you don't believe it doesn't make it untrue."

The Soma must be influencing him, he thought. He was starting to feel distinctly overheated and untethered to his body. "And so, I am a glorious rebel, am I?"

"No. You are the most hated man in the universe."

"Quite an accomplishment. You don't think I'd remember something like that?"

"When you don't even remember your own name?"

He let the remainder of the syrupy liquid flow down his throat. This time there was a flash of recognition. He had had something like this before. Sprawled on a couch somewhere, a happy, open laughing face close by, relaxing in the same way, talking, always incessantly talking.

 _"_ _Break out the booze girls, it's fiesta time. Now, Cally, Dayna, let's not be violent. You know how I hate to see a man cry, especially when it's me."_

He handed the empty flask back, and stood painfully. "I think I'd better go." Forget the fact that he wasn't quite sure where he was. She stood to join him, keeping an annoyingly steady hand on his arm. He yanked it way.

"I'm not an invalid," he spat. "I can still walk on my own. I think we've both wasted enough of each other's time."

"I have proof, you know."

"Oh, yes. The rest of this imaginary group is going to show up a try to convince me, are they?"

"No."

Something recoiled inside him. A sick empty feeling started in the pit of his stomach. "Please," he said. "I need to go."

"Afterwards, you were tortured by the Federation. We don't know how much you told them, but we know it went on for a very long time. Once they were done with you, you were sent for mental re-programing. They took everything. When someone is mind-wiped, a new set of memories is usually implanted to help them maintain their equilibrium. To stop them from being suspicious, yes, but also to help them adapt to their new existence. If you leave someone blank, they have no basis for comparison, if you will. They live in a constant state of confusion and depression. They are nothing because they have nothing. Even babies retain memories of their surroundings. It's a type of torture. A very effective and long-term variety."

"If you say so."

"How are you finding it?"

He felt the colour drain from his face. "You said something about proof?"

She pulled a small box out of her pocket and switched it on, holding it out to him in the space between their bodies. A red light in the top corner throbbed rhythmically.

"What is it?"

"A tracking receiver. It's calibrated to specifically pick up the frequency of the tracking device implanted in your neck."

He took a step back, eyes glued to the red button. Surely not. She laughed at his expression.

"I supposed it never occurred to you to wonder why the back of your neck was always bothering you? Go ahead." She held the box out to him. He took it with hesitant fingers. Even the short movement closer to him caused the light to throb quicker, more insistently.

She gestured to the area around them. "Go hide. I'll even give you a head start."

He stood staring at the box. She took it back from him, putting it back into her pocket. "Are you going to tell me that all Computer Analysts First Class have one of those?"

"How do you know any of this?"

"It doesn't matter right now. Would you like me to take it out for you?"

"What do you want from me?"

To his horror she moved even closer, looping her arms around his waist, hands resting on the small of his back. "I want to give you your memories back."

"You're with the Resistance." His hands scrapped over her shoulders, an ineffective attempt to push her away. He hadn't used any strength.

"Of course I am. So is the man who's been following us."

He resisted the urge to look around. His mouth had gone completely dry. No one had been this close to him in…oh, God, in three years. His head bent forward, coming to rest almost without his noticing against hers. Her warm breath on the side of his neck felt revelatory. How could he have forgotten how important human touch?"

"Why would I want these memories back, if I really am everything you say I am?"

"You may not want them, but I do. The things inside your head could win me a rebellion."

"You?"

"Me and my friends."

"And if I say no?"

"Then you're helping _her_ win."

"Her?"

"Sleer."

"The President? I have nothing to do with her."

"One day, you're going to look back and remember saying that, and you're going to hate yourself for it."

His breath was rasping, chest trembling at the very thought of her slight brush against him. No good would come of this. He knew it as sure as he knew that something had already started, some action set in motion now that there was no turning back from, and that finally, he felt completely and utterly at a loss to resist.

"What do you want to do?" he forced out.

"Go somewhere private," she said back, infuriating in her calm. "Your apartment will do. It'll be thoroughly bugged, but that works for us. Let them think they know exactly why we're there. I'll remove the tracking device, and then we can talk about exactly how useful you are about to become."

His fingers came to rest lightly against her lips. "Please don't."

"You know It's already too late for that."

He took his fingers away, curling them into a fist at his damaged side.

"Tell me my name."

"Your name is Kerr Avon."

* * *

 _A woman, long and sinuous as a snake in a pristine white skin, a dripping laser probe hanging from limp fingers at her side. Blood red smeared across hands with blood red nails. Her teeth flashing behind blood red lips. She came to him, strapped outstretched on the cold metal table. Hate rose in him, bitter, and seething from every pore. His eyes tried to follow the progress of a fingertip as it traced from his chin towards his ear, the laser probe buzzing to life. He tensed, waiting for the searing pain, the warm, sticky chase of fluid racing from the soon open wound. Blood in his mouth where he had bitten through his lips. And then her voice a purr in his ear as she told him about Blake._

 _Something terrible about Blake._

He woke slowly from the dream, sifting through levels of haze and muted awareness. Blind, empty, grasping for clarity. Then the panic started in the pit of his stomach. He opened his eyes, back in his room, and the world was flooded with light. He snapped them shut again instantly, trying to roll away onto his side and bury his head in his hands. His neck was stiff and itchy, grating against something crusted on his pillow. Finally, using his free hand to shield his eyes, he managed to pry his eyelids open and glance down at himself, then half-turn to identify the substance on his sheets.

It was blood. His hand left his forehead and explored the back of his neck, where he met with tenderness; a sudden sharp sting as his fingers found a hot jagged cut. He hissed at the contact, and then groaned, pushing himself painfully into a sitting position. There was a sound now, something nagging at the back of his mind. A hum that was not the familiar air circulator.

His shower was on.

Abruptly it turned off, and a moment later the door of his bathroom slid open, revealing a small woman toweling fiery red hair as she stepped easily into the room. She wore his pyjama top, apparently far more comfortable in his home than he was. She stopped when she saw him. A smile lit her face, and then disappeared as she noticed his discomfort.

"Lights, level one," she commanded, and the abusive illumination abated. "I'm so sorry," she said, continuing to the bed in the warmer glow, where she sat companionably, pressing into his hip with her own to get him to shuffle over and make room for her. The bed was so narrow he found the action brought him right up against the wall. "We must have fallen asleep with the lights on last night, and I didn't think to dim them when I got up."

Her fingers skated through his hair, removing it from where it was tangled across his forehead. "You're quiet this morning."

He didn't think his vocal chords could work if he wanted them to.

Aza took it all in, the blood, his pale waxy face, the sweat sheening his forehead and cheeks. The trembling of his whole body. She nodded once and then stood off the bed, holding her hand out to him.

He simply stared at her, lungs labouring. He could feel his head getting light, the terror rising, choking off his air. Her hand did not waver. Instead she reached under the sheets and found his wrist, tugging on it gently until he was forced to follow her pull, letting her draw him out of bed and across the room, heedless of the fact that he was naked. His chest and arms were streaked with blood as well.

"You're in shock," she reassured him, leading him into the bathroom. "We need to get you warmed up." She turned the water in the shower on, and nudged him firmly into the spray. "Do you want me to help you?"

"No." The first intelligible word out of his mouth.

"Alright. I'll be in the other room. Just call if you want me. Take all the time you need."

With that she left him. After inviting him to take as long as he wanted. In his own shower.

He blinked after her as the door closed behind her. The water beat down on his muscles, the bisected and the still whole, unclenching them, and after a time the panic eased, releasing it's strangle hold on his throat. His breathing calmed. His arms and hands relaxing at his sides, and the day before re-acquired its shape.

* * *

He had preceded her into his apartment, sliding his key-card back into his pocket as he stepped to the side and let her get ahead of him, look around at the dark empty rooms while he softly shut the door.

"Lights, level three." His throat felt swollen and painful. At this level, the illumination retained a soft quality. Slightly warm. He never turned the lights on full here. It was too sterile, too apt to make him feel naked.

Aza's eyes ran around the apartment, through the common room, kitchen, bedroom beyond. There was nothing personal in evidence. No pictures, trinkets, reading matter; no personality at all. Simply stark plass walls and dull glass.

"I see you value economy in your furnishings." She couldn't help herself.

"I don't particularly _value_ anything. Nothing here, anyway."

She smiled, realizing that she was coming to find his voice familiar. At once too deep and too nasal. It sounded as if it didn't get much use these days. How she had never noticed that he sounded like a first calendar public school boy, she would never know.

She crossed into the common room, letting a hand trail over the back of the sleek cream-coloured couch.

His eye followed her fingers, fascinated by them. Her touch gentle and sure of itself. _My couch_ , her fingers said. _My place_ , _my time_ , _my choice_. Her eyes sought him out again. _You may follow_.

"Would you care to sit down?" he asked instead. "I'm not exactly sure how you want to proceed."

She shook her head, crossing back towards him where he still lurked almost in the doorway. He found her look unnerving, so openly surveying him and categorizing what she found.

He hadn't been prepared for this.

He closed his eyes and tried to summon up some hint of how to act under these circumstances. Nothing. He was disgusted to discover he hadn't even been left any sexual fantasies.

When he opened his eyes, she was standing so close she almost brushed against his chest. He had to tilt his head down to see her, almost a full head shorter. "Can I offer you some tea? Coffee? I think I still have milk. It's not real of course…"

She kissed him gently, very slowly, giving him every opportunity to pull away. Her lips slid side to side across his, surprising him with their softness. Her breath was warm and light across his newly moistened mouth.

She let one of her hands lift and fall against the base of his neck, drawing him closer.

Aza was surprised at her own response to him. He was not at all what she had expected. She had been ready for him to be confused, disenchanted, flippant certainly, but not kind, careful, or so achingly vulnerable. His hesitation was palpable, his fear, but also his good intent. And most frightening to her, his courage. _I could never do this,_ she thought, _let someone in this far on trust and curiosity alone._

His appearance too, was shocking. He had always been described to her as dark. She remembered him that way. Dark hair, dark eyes, dark clothes, a doer of dark deeds. But no one had prepared her for the depth either, the horrible look of _knowing_ in those paradoxically empty eyes. Something locked away behind the riotous tangles of hair and straight and narrow nose _._

 _I am black, but comely._

And a mouth, she was currently discovering, that was well worth the long wait. The tip of her tongue touched his bottom lip, and he started back, turning his head away.

He pulled in several heaving breaths, the room came in and out of focus. There was a sound in his head. A laugh. _It was a woman's voice, almost a purr. He felt nails across his back, his shoulders, opening the flesh across his face._

Aza brushed a soft hand across his cheek, unaware of the phantom pain, taking a hold on his beard and bringing his face back around. "No kissing then?"

He shook his head, almost frantic. "It would seem not."

She nodded, the scorn he had been waiting for never touching her face. "Alright," she said instead, "do you have a preference between bed, floor, or couch?"

He huffed out a short laugh. "I'm afraid I'm too old to entertain thoughts of anything but bed." He indicated with his chin. "Through that way."

She took his hand and led him.

He stopped suddenly, and she looked over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow at him.

"Do you actually know how old I am?" He looked embarrassed to have to ask.

"You're forty-three. I'm thirty-six, in case you have any concerns about that."

"Oh, no…no, I just…wanted to know. You seem to be my memory."

"Only for now."

She squeezed his hand with affection and resumed pulling him after her. His right hand, again. Did she not understand that it was repulsive? He kept expecting her to realize her error and drop it with disgust. She didn't, and the tug at his shoulder seemed to be generating feelings of anticipation and warmth in his chest, creeping lower.

"Lights full," she called softly when they reached his bedroom. He reacted immediately, drawing away back towards the lower lighting of the common room.

"No, level two," he ordered. The lights dropped.

"Sensitive?" She asked.

He wanted some comment to toss off. _I'm shy_. But he was suddenly terrified at the thought of her seeing him without clothes. Patches of chest hair swirling unevenly around tortured flesh. He imagined her look of pity, and it made him sick. Her hands reached for the fastenings of his tunic.

Aza was shocked at the strength of his grip as his hands locked around her wrists, pulling them away. She tugged to get her hands back, but he did not let go, his look glassy and far away. She recognized the panic, and wondered if he did. Did he have many attacks? Intuition told her he did. She leaned closer, keeping her voice soft and warm.

"Alright. No kissing. No undressing. You are making this a wonderful test of my ingenuity." She rested her head against his shoulder and whispered in his ear. "We can stop. Whenever you want. Is it that they're listening that upsets you?"

He blinked at her for a moment, struggling for the meaning of her words. Of course. He had forgotten about the supposed audience.

"Would you prefer we watch a vid?" she asked, perking up.

"I haven't any. I'm sorry. I suppose I'm just no good at this…"

She raised a hand to his mouth, and for the first time she seemed displeased with him. "Don't ever say that. You are exactly as you should be." She dropped her hand, but then smiled at him again.

"Are you against _me_ undressing?"

He could feel the very identifiable heat of desire spread through him again, adrenaline making the muscles of his legs feel loose. A chance to see all that delicate skin?

"I have no objections."

She unpinned her hair matter-of-factly and let it fall. Her shoes, socks, trousers, pants, and outer tunic were discarded just as efficiently, leaving her in only a loose shirt. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. She reached for her collar.

"Slower," he said, without realizing he was going to speak.

She blinked and looked over at him. A smile touched her eyes. She locked him in their green gaze, drawing the shirt slowly over her head, stretching at the top of the movement before letting it fall to the floor between them, leaving her naked and unguarded.

"Would you like to touch?" she asked.

He nodded, completely lost.

Aza was surprised when, of all places, his hand came to rest on her cheek first. He traced his hand slowly down her neck to where it joined her shoulder. An intense shiver ran through her and he pulled his hand away. The break in contact distressed her. The large warm hand already a necessary addendum to her. Too late, she was realizing the danger of someone with no pre-conceived notions of sex or seduction. She took his hand again with a smile, this time setting it against her breast. She looked at his own clothed body, making sure to indicate only his face. "May I?"

He nodded, and she traced two fingers across the arch of his eyebrow, down across the high cheekbone, and up the side of his nose, switching to one finger. She ran down over the tip of his nose, his lips, his bearded chin, into the hollow of his throat. She paused at the opening of his shirt, checking silently with him before sliding her two fingers inside across his collarbone. His breathing deepened. He could feel himself becoming supersensitive, her fingers burning him almost uncomfortably. At this moment it felt perfect. He couldn't live without it. He needed her touch, and when her finger finally brushed against the first ridge of the scar on his shoulder he gasped, eyes flying open. He didn't even realize that he had shut them.

He instinctively went to pull back, when his gaze fell on her face. Her eyes were closed. She was not looking at him, merely letting her fingertips trace the contours of his personal mountain range.

"Your skin is so soft," she whispered to him.

A red haze fell over his eyes, and finally, blessedly, all brain function stopped. He grabbed her shoulders and pressed her back towards the bed turning her as he did so, facing her away. He pressed his entire body fully against hers, her skin rasping against the course material of his tunic. She felt like home in his arms, wherever that was, cool and warm at the same time, ribs rising and falling under his hands.

"Please don't turn around."

She nodded. He took a step back from her, and she heard him striping his outer tunic over his head, leaving his shirt in place. Then the snap and jingle of his pants being unfastened. She felt him step closer and hesitate, and she instinctively knew what was distressing him. With their height difference, it would be almost impossible to maneuver himself into a comfortable position without being a contortionist. Without a word, she climbed onto the bed, keeping herself turned away from him.

A sound escaped him, and then he was everywhere she needed him. Thankfully she found herself ready, since he didn't even pause long enough to check. She allowed herself a half-smile, but a moment later it was wiped off her face as she felt the first roll of sensation overwhelm her.

She let her head crane back, eyes closed in pleasure. Her hand slipped back unobtrusively, searching out his flank, twisting into the material there and pulling it free of his open waistband.

He was past the point of caring, of knowing where he was, of noticing whether he was still breathing or not.

Then a faint touch sent a signal to his overwrought brain. He looked down to where she had pulled his shirt away from his body. His hip exposed, her fingers were tenderly stroking the marred flesh.

The sight was too much for him, and he dissolved into white noise and blindness, hardly aware of the cry that tore its way out of him.

They collapsed together, still not facing each other, him sobbing for breath, or just sobbing. He wasn't entirely sure. His arms and legs trembled, and he couldn't bring himself to look at her.

 _What a disaster._ Had she even…? Did he dare ask? What an idiot. He bit his lip so hard he was sure he would taste blood. What a fumbling idiot. He felt himself retreat, pull away, bury his burning face in his pillow. _Oh, dear God_ , and he was still laying on top of her, what a blazing idiot. He jerked away, trying to take all his weight on his elbows and give her more room.

Aza felt a pang of regret when the warmth of his body was yanked away. She was just starting to drift into a comfortable haze, content and safe under him. His warm breath across her cheek a far better gift than she had received in years. Still. Perhaps it was for the best. He obviously did not want to be close to her, and she reminded herself why she had come here. What she had promised. He was probably impatient for her to get on with it, now that what he obviously perceived as the unsavory part of her plan was done.

She slid out of the bed and padded over to her clothes, piled on the floor. She took two small items out of her pocket, clasping them tightly in her palm as she turned back to him, still sprawled face-down on the bed.

"Come on," she said. "Shower."

He followed her uncertainly. She had already turned on the water and stepped into the stall. She stood looking at him. "Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Well, what? Well, darling, are we making love or expecting rain?"

She misinterpreted his look as one of confusion instead of the awe it was, and explained. "It's a first calendar quote. A musician. Do you like music?"

"I don't know."

"Come find out. I sing in the shower."

He lifted shaking fingers to his shirt. Oh, hell. He at least owed her this, having failed to terribly only moments before. Still, his hands shook, sweat stood out on his body. Shoes and pants gone, shirt hanging loose. He squeezed his eyes shut and let the shirt fall to the floor. The warm moist air of the room hit his body, and he stepped into the stall with his eyes still shut, ears tuned to hear any sound of disgust. Hot water beat down on his flesh, and after a still moment, he opened his eyes. She was smiling again. The stall was tight, but they could both stand one in front of the other in it, if they were very careful they could even turn around or switch places. Her first action was to lace her arms around his neck, and kiss him tenderly on the lips, wanting him to taste some of her cat-like contentment. She dipped her tongue into his mouth before he had a chance to realize what was happening. A thrill ran through him.

She stopped suddenly, looking apologetic. "Oh, I'm so sorry, I forgot. I'm afraid I'm just incorrigibly tactile."

He put an experimental arm around her, drawing her against him. "It's fine." Did she still want him, then? Even after his performance earlier? Her hands brushed over his shoulders, gripping tightly. No horror? No fear? She kissed him again, and the continued pressure of her mouth over his seemed to indicate that this was the case. Her body leaned into his, pressing his back against the cold wall of the shower. Goosebumps crawled across his flesh. When she pulled back from him, there was a mischievous look on her face.

"We're safe here, if you keep your voice low, and clean-up will be much easier."

He nodded once, letting his lips drift down to her wet shoulder. Easier. Of course. The reason she had come here in the first place.

He scraped her tentatively with his teeth. "I don't really have anything to say."

Her finger brushed against the corner of his eyebrow, and he lifted his head far enough to see her eyes, deep green, locking into his with a steely purposefulness now. She held up her closed hand and opened it, turning her palm upward as she did. A small magnetized bar, and a laser probe lay there, innocuous looking enough. His chest tightened, heart thudding at an almost defining level in his ears.

"Ready?" she asked.

His throat went dry, knees threatening to give out on him. He shook his head. She kissed him again, this time harder. Only his greater height kept his head from being forced all the way back into the wall.

"Will you do it anyway?" she said after, "or will we stop now?"

He watched water drip down her forehead and over the ridges of her delicate flame coloured eyebrows. Her temples were wet. His own Phlegethon then, an exquisite river of fire. Her eyes quick and ready. He had never felt desire like this. Well, not that he would remember if he had, he supposed. He felt it now like something new and dangerous.

From somewhere deeper than his stomach came the words "do it, then."

It took everything he had to turn his back on her, bracing both hands against the tile wall of the shower. He felt her hand steady his shoulder, pausing to stroke absently to allow him to get used to the feeling. Then her hand slid across to the base of his neck, drifting upwards into the wet tendrils of dark hair curling around his nape.

Aza lifted his hair carefully, pressing it to either side of this head, giving her a clear view of his vertebrae. After three years, she knew the tissue would have re-formed around the transmitter, accepting the small device as a part of the body now.

She brought the magnet to the back of his neck and set it there, gently shifting it back and forth. Nothing. She moved it slightly higher, repeating the process. Then higher, still nothing. She tried again, at the very base of his skull, and was rewarded with a hiss from him.

She shifted the magnet to the side, and saw a slight shift and ripple under the skin. She let her hand slide down his slick back, and then up again to settle into his hair, bringing her mouth close to his ear.

"I'm sorry, but this is going to hurt." She pulled the magnet sideways sharply, and he cried out as the tracking device jerked beneath the skin to follow.

She pulled back the other way, and he growled again, this time from behind gritted teeth. She moved the magnet around in a circle, and saw the skin lift and follow. She had it free. Her hand swept around to the front of him, splayed out across his chest, stroking there to try and gentle him.

"I'll make it quick," she said into his ear. She could feel his heart hammering against her hand. His head dropped forward to rest against the now heated wet tile. He was excited again. She didn't have to look down at him to know.

"Fine," he whispered.

He was amazed to find that he wanted the pain. The salt hot blood and splatter. Physical love, he realized, reminded him of a scalpel stroking flesh. He strained to feel the bite of her teeth in his shoulder. He had fumbled before, but it felt like nothing of that reality was left. Now he deftly maneuvered himself back, fitting his body against hers exactly as he needed. He felt her heart rate increase.

She removed her hand from his chest and grasped the laser probe in it, taking a deep steadying breath before snapping it on. The small hum next to his ear made him jump, and turn his head. She saw his eyelashes fall and rise as he looked at it, a dark expression taking over that face, followed by a chilling smile. He pressed closer to her hand holding the probe.

"Do it."

His voice was a low growl. She felt her own body respond to it almost against her will. She pressed an open-mouth kiss to the back of his neck, instinctively letting her teeth scrap down to his shoulder. His forehead made a dull slap as it hit the shower wall, shoulders trembling with need.

She adjusted the magnet until it was as far down on the base of his neck as she could draw it, and then brought the probe into position.

 _Do it._ His voice swept across her mind.

The laser cut neatly into his flesh, burning a thin line from one side of the device to the other. The cut so sharp that for a second nothing happened.

Suddenly the blood spilled forward and down, running down his back and legs, turning pink in the swirling water on the stall floor.

She used the magnet to slip the tracking device out through the new incision and after a few more tugs, it dropped soft and pliant into her palm. She turned the laser off and held the device up under the spray, rubbing the remains of clinging tissue off with her fingers. She set the probe and magnet down on the soap shelf and held the device up for him to see between thumb and forefinger.

"Care to have a look?"

He turned around, not caring any longer how crowded they were, how obvious the needs of his body. She swallowed suddenly as he appraised the small chip, and then her, his eyes dragging up and down.

"How does it feel to be free?"

The noise he made was almost inhuman. All she knew was that he had her arms, pinning her first, and then lifting her against the shower wall under the spray that stung in her eyes.

His mouth sank into her neck, lips and tongue sucking and licking the water away. She had enough foresight to place the tracking device next to the laser probe before she wrapped her legs around his hips, feeling his twisted skin beneath her palms and thighs. His hands dug into her back and hair, his mouth demanded compliance.

Her head flung back, exposing her throat to him, and she accidentally said "Avon."

His entire body shuddered, and his mind cried out against it. _Wrong_. Something in him was straining, sobbing behind each laboured breath. _Don't you ever call me that. Don't you dare ever call me that._

He opened his mouth to tell her, but then his moment of expiration was there, in the clench of muscles and the loss of inhibition, he hissed into her ear "Say it again."

" _Avon_."

* * *

Later in his bed, pressed together, as much because of a need to touch as the space restriction, she had run her drowsy hand over the small cut at the back of his neck. They did not have a regenerator pad, but she had closed the wound with Steristrips. And since the tender inside of her wrist had been so close to his mouth he had kissed her there, and then her inner elbow, and her eyelid as well. He had fallen away into sleep, the pleasant weight of another human resting against his chest, the sound of another breath beside his own, the lights on almost full, allowing him to keep his eye on her right up until the last second of consciousness. Because he didn't quite believe that she would really be there tomorrow.

The water was scalding him and he stepped out, grabbing a towel off the rack and winding it around him. He turned off the shower and wandered back into his bedroom. The cold air thrilled him. She was not there, and for a second his breathing shallowed again, but then the smell of synthesized coffee reached him, and he limped off in search of her.


	4. Sighs, Complaints, and Ululations Loud

He drank his coffee slowly, watching her over the rim. She still had that easy way about her, casting about in his cupboards, sniffing the contents of the containers on his counter. He watched the play of the light across her cheekbones and lips. "Do you never eat anything besides concentrates?" she asked.

"Hmm?"

He pulled himself out of his reverie and shook his head, causing the new chain around his neck to sway. Another thing that had appeared out of one of her many pockets last night. On the end was a small plastic container, inside which she had enclosed his tracking device. _Never go anywhere without it_ , she had warned him, _unless you can sneak out without them knowing you're gone_.

"There's coffee," he said.

"You're running low."

He cast a glance at the full canister open beside the coffee maker, but decided not to say anything. He was becoming accustomed to the thought of people listening to their conversations, and that she had reasons to lie to them, although this acceptance brought with it a flush of remembrance about the previous night. Instead he took another hot swallow and offered his own mug to her. She shook her head, but came closer, clasping her arms around his towel-wrapped hips.

"All your food is drugged," she breathed into his ear, before kissing him lightly. His cup dropped to his chest, still warm enough to be uncomfortable. He set the mug down on the counter.

"Will I see you again tonight?" she asked, louder.

"If you'd like."

She laughed at him for that, running her fingers up his back in a way she already knew sent his head spinning. "And you? Would you like?"

"I would, yes."

"Well then, better get dressed. The sooner to work, the sooner back."

He stepped away, disappointed, but with a smile. "Taskmaster," he muttered, turned to go and retrieve a few articles of ubiquitously grey clothing from his bedroom floor.

"Chevron?"

"Yes?"

"Perhaps after work we could stop somewhere for something to eat before coming back here." She gestured helplessly at his empty cupboards. He removed his towel with a flourish and at threw it at her.

* * *

The temperature in the domes never changed. A constant state just below body temperature kept everyone comfortably clothed without having to waste materials on extra layers. The Citizenry was reminded often that this was also the optimal working temperature.

Chevron was therefore surprised at the chill that ran through him when he caught sight of the man waiting on the other side of the street when he stepped out of his apartment building with Aza at his side. Aza, for her part gave a low groan. She had his bloody sheets tucked under her arm, for disposal along the way.

The man wasted no time in coming over to them as soon as they emerged, even going so far as to knock his way past a few scurrying pedestrians without even an apologetic glance. He stopped within a few feet of the couple, and Chevron could instantly see his resemblance to the woman at his side. Tagg put out his hand in Chevron's direction. It reminded Chevron suddenly of a bear trap, about to snap closed.

"Chevron," Aza said, "this is Tagg Flynn, my brother. Tagg, this is Chevron. First name on file."

Chevron took a breath and grasped the offered hand, wincing at the crushing grip.

"I am an explosives expert," Tagg told him.

Chevron winced again. "Of course you are."

Aza looped her arm around Tagg's and dragged him away from Chevron, causing him to have to release his grip, and steering him down the path towards the main road, casting a glance over her shoulder to make sure Chevron was following.

"It was so kind of you, darling, to come walk me to work," she started, but then noticed that Tagg was grinding his teeth so loudly that she feared they might shatter at any moment.

They managed to get a few feet down the street before it became to much for him and he threw her hand off.

"Did you have to stay all night?!"

"It was the most inconspicuous way I could think of to get it done."

"But _all night_ , Aza?! With him?"

"I'm hardly a threat, if that's what you're worried about…" Chevron called from behind them, where he was struggling to catch up. Tagg whirled on him. "An explosive expert who knows where you live!" he reiterated.

Chevron spread his hands out before him in a gesture of surrender. "Alright. Point taken."

Aza made a snort of exasperation and hauled Tagg back around to face her, urging them along. "I'm an adult, Tagg, I am permitted to spend my time with whomever I want."

"No. You're not." He took a moment to control himself, smoothing out his tunic. "What about Casimir?"

Aza felt her heart sink. "He knows?"

"He will soon. He's called a meeting for tonight. Fancy bringing your new friend along to meet everyone?"

That did give her pause. But she took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. "Why not? Now's as good a time as any."

"Excuse, me?" Chevron had caught up with them now. "Has this something to do with me? Because if it does, perhaps I should be involved in the discussion."

Tagg turned on him, grabbing him by the front of his tunic and pulling him forward, dragging him off balance. "Listen, Hephaestus, my sister may think you're worth the trouble, but I'm hard pressed to gather up enough saliva to spit on you. If I find out you've hurt her in _any way_ , that legendary name of yours won't save you from…"

Chevron knocked Tagg's hands off his tunic and shoved him. Tagg stumbled back, and then righted himself, stepping back in quickly.

Aza jumped between them. "Alright. Enough!" Her voice was loud and sharp in the quiet street. A few heads turned their way, and she lowered her voice to a harsh whisper.

"You're both acting like children."

Tagg's face darkened. He looked positively primed to throw a tantrum. He set his hands on his hips instead, turning away. Aza took hold of Chevron's shoulder. She had to give him a shake to draw his eyes away from Tagg and down to her again. His chest rose and fell with shallow gulps of air.

"I warned you there were others," she said, with a hint of amusement in her voice. He rolled his eyes, the tension leaving him, and she kissed his cheek, giving herself an excuse to speak low in his ear. "Tonight. Meet me in the park after work. We'll go to your place, and then when it's safe I'll bring you to meet them. Will you come?"

He glanced down at her, and then beyond her, at Tagg, who stood and glowered. The smile he gave her was toothsome, showing slight gaps. "I'll meet you then."

She kissed him without passion, but with a lingering hint of promise, and then stepped out of his way, allowing him to skirt around Tagg and resume his normal walk to work.

Tagg watched him go, fingers twitching at his sides. Once he was gone he turned back to his sister, who stood waiting, hands in her pockets.

" _Aza?!_ "

"Enough, Tagg, I don't want to hear it."

"I told you, this is a terrible Idea."

"Too late. It's already done."

"But how long, Renn?" Sleer stalked around her white office, marble white skin almost blending in with the walls, her jet black hair in shocking contrast. "You've had access to the Teleport for over a year now. Even the Plaxton drive didn't take that long to re-construct and implement.

"It's difficult," the grey face on the vid monitor atop her desk spluttered. "The _Scorpio_ was a complete wreck. All her systems were in a state of intense disorder. It took us months to even figure out which parts of debris belonged to the Teleport system at all, after having it all shipped to our labs here, and as far as getting it to work, we are making headway, but it is a very advance technology, years in advance of anything we have to compare it to…"

"My entire fleet of Mark Tens have been equipped with the Plaxton Drive. I want teleport capability as well."

She swished over to her desk, seating herself directly in the eye-line of the ruffled departmental head. "And Renn, I want it soon. Or do I have to remind you of what happened to the last Section Leader who didn't preform up to my exacting standards?"

Renn swallowed hard, a visible bobbing of the throat even on the small vid screen. No, she didn't. He didn't know what had happened to the last Section Leader. No one did. Not even his family. Sleer smiled at the frightened man, and cut the connection abruptly.

She rolled her head on the plush rest of the leather seat, letting her eyes wander out over the starscape behind her. Some days she really was frustrated at not having Avon here to speed this process along. It was a lost hope though; even their mutual attraction would not have been enough to keep him from fighting her, and he could be a dreadful bore when he got it into his head to be uncooperative. Six months of intense torture had not induced him to see things her way, and if there was one thing she truly hated it was pigheadedness. A stubborn refusal to see what was good for him, what was possible.

There would be pain, yes, of course. No man surrendered without pain, but there would be pleasure as well, if he'd only allowed himself to be led.

Still, it was too late now. Things were safer this way. She wielded ultimate power, and Avon had been dominated so entirely that it wasn't even fun anymore. Meanwhile there was still no sign of ORAC, and all her peons were scrambling to catch up with technical concepts that one Computer Analyst First Class could have done in his sleep.

She sighed and turned her vid monitor back on, switching over to her favorite live monitor feed.

He was seated at his desk, a forgotten cup of coffee perched at his elbow. He seemed to be getting along well with the lady in the seat next to him over the last few months. A friend perhaps? Sleer reminded herself to have the woman re-assigned.

Avon shifted his tight shoulders. _Oh, darling,_ she thought, _I bet you would be so much more comfortable if I'd let the doctors heal those injuries properly for you._

Something flashed across his face, only for a second, and then disappeared. Sleer frowned.

The comm on her desk chimed to life.

"Madam President?" It was Rai's voice. "There is a message from your operative in the Earth resistance group. He has a report to pass along."

Her hand slammed down on the comm button. "Not now."

Sleer paused the vid. She rewound the tape, watching again. _Yes. Right there._

Avon's eyes had slid away from his computer screen for a moment, considering something private to him, and the expression ghosting across his lips was a smile.

Sleer smashed the button to turn the monitor off. She realized that her finger was still depressing the comm button.

"Rai?!"

"Yes, Madam President?" his anxious voice spluttered.

"I want the head of Terran Security on the line. _Now."_

"You're smiling," Aza pointed out, sliding down onto the bench beside Chevron. He started slightly, having been drifting around in his own thoughts, and then turned the smile on her. _He really is quite handsome,_ Aza thought as she considered this new expression, despite his scruffy appearance. She admitted it was an unconventional handsomeness. One had to concentrate to see it, but it was there, a surprising reality of his constantly shifting features. Perhaps _pretty_ was a better word. She knew it had a great deal to do with his eyes. She had always been fascinated by people's eyes, and his were liquid brown, knowing, and unfathomable.

"I think I've been trying not to all day," he said.

"What? Smile?"

He shrugged. "It is a little out of character, wouldn't you say?"

"Hmm." She let her shoulder rest against his for a moment, watching the daily trudge of people pass them by. "Maybe not."

His expression clouded over for a moment, one hand worrying the corner of his tunic. "This isn't safe, Aza, what you're doing."

"No."

"Then why do it?"

"Because the Federation-"

"I know. Genocide. Enslavement," he pushed back into her shoulder. "Why are _you_ doing it? My charms aren't that overwhelming."

A look of contrition passed across her face.

"Please, don't get me wrong," he continued quickly, embarrassed, "its extremely satisfying, just not very flattering."

"Being a means to an end, you mean?"

"Hmm."

She seemed to think about this, fingers twisting and untwisting on her lap. Chevron realized with surprise that he was taking only shallow, quick breaths, and had to force himself to release the tension in his shoulders and take a deep breath. He didn't know what he was so afraid of, but obviously her answer mattered to him more than he thought it would.

Her hand stole into his, and he felt her calm gaze tugging his eyes up to meet hers. Whatever reticence she had felt was gone. Her face was clear and open, inviting him in, as he had so quickly come to need.

"It's true, I don't know you. It's true, I have a personal reason for wanting your cooperation, and it's true, that I don't love you."

He gave a short laugh, and it sounded sadder that he had hoped. "Well, you're nothing if not thorough."

She squeezed his hand, keeping his attention. "But we _are_ lovers. And I don't regret it. And we _are_ friends. Something I hope we can continue. I don't know how this ends, I've never done anything like it before, but I don't have to _pretend_ to enjoy your company. I do. And I don't want to see you hurt."

"Even though you'd sacrifice me if came to it?"

"Yes." She hadn't paused.

He really wished she had paused.

Her face changed, and her voice, when she spoke, was hollow. "I had a husband, until four years ago." She was hiding from him now, her eyes glazed. "He wasn't with Blake, but he was a follower of his ideas. Federation policy is to eliminate all rebels, and their families."

"Families?"

"It was my job that saved me. Too many resources invested for them to want to waste, and Tagg was only connected by marriage. He was questioned, and released. They wiped the relevant memories from me and that was the end of it."

"What do you mean, 'wiped the relevant memories'? They made you forget him?"

"Yes. It took me a long time to start to realize what they'd done."

He waited a moment, but she was finished, even though he could tell there was more. His own stomach was twisting now, full of a sudden dread.

"And I was a rebel…?"

"Yes."

"And so my family…?

"Yes."

Just like that. He almost wanted to laugh again, but couldn't find it in himself. "All of them?"

"Yes."

He did laugh then, dry and without a trace of humour. He didn't even know how many people that meant. Did he have any brothers or sisters? Had his parents still been alive at the time? Had there been someone else? A lover, or a child? He tried to remember, to search for even the faintest glimmer of sadness, or a glimpse of a familiar face, or feeling of warmth. But there was nothing there. Only absence, and a heavy numbness. It gave him a headache actually, even the attempt to look back into his mind. "It seems…. we have a lot in common."

"As all good friends do."

Her hand squeezed his again. He had forgotten she was still holding it. A gesture of comradery that shot straight to his heart.

"I'm sorry," he said, feeling the inadequacy of the statement.

"Thank you," she replied. Her voice eased his conscience. She sounded like she meant it.

He hadn't realized how lonely he had been. How empty his existence. Aza was right when she'd said his life was a kind of torture. He knew it was human nature to make one's situation the norm, no matter how bad. Even the tortured eventually came to empathize with their torturers. This first touch of human kindness over the last days was almost too much for him, and he knew he had grabbed onto her like a lifeline. Where she led he would follow, regardless of consequences.

Attending his first meeting of the resistance was more frightening than he thought it would be. Chevron had known there would be others there, but he had not been ready for the feeling that he had come upon the Inquisition in progress. Seven pairs of eyes stared at him. Seven mouths set in tight bruising lines. He fought the urge to clear his throat. Tagg was one of them, pointedly not making things any easier. Finally, a giant sheepdog of a man in soft-looking work clothes stopped pulling on his bottom lip and stepped forward.

"Kerr Avon?" he rumbled, holding out his calloused hand.

Chevron accepted the greeting, squeezing the hand in silent thanks. "So I'm told."

A whisper of sound ran around the room, possibly his name, and he saw feet start to shift uncomfortably in the group.

Casimir barked a short laugh. "Well, if Aza is the one who told you, you can trust her. She has a tendency to be overenthusiastic, but she doesn't lie. I'm afraid I cannot say that I'm pleased to meet you."

Chevron looked around at the circle of stony faces. "I see. Aza mentioned to me that this Avon chap was not well-liked. It seems she was not exaggerating."

"She was not. Your re-emergence puts you in quite a bit of danger."

"From you?"

Casimir thought about that. "Not at present, no. To condemn a man without allowing him to defend himself would be against our principals." He looked back significantly at his group of rebels. "Find a spot and sit. I need to have a moment alone with Aza. Bril will answer any questions you have."

Chevron did not miss the sharp hold Casimir took of Aza's arm, and then they, along with Tagg, crossed to the other side of the room, their voices lost in the hum of the machinery.

A comfortably fat man with a thin fringe of light brown hair like a monk's tonsure crossed to an overturned set of crates a few feet away and gestured for Chevron to join him. For lack of any better options, Chevron did. The rest of the rebels created a rough circle around them. None of them sat.

"My name is Bril," the fat man said. "What name shall we call you? Do you want us to call you Avon?"

"If you'd like, but I'm more comfortable with Chevron."

"Very well. This is Holburn," He pointed to a smallish man who seemed to made up entirely of sharp angles. "Lana," a woman of average height, long brown hair, "Waitstill," an elderly man, hunched over, "And Gedney," a large man, broad, with a nose broken multiple times.

Chevron nodded to each in turn, considering that if this is what constituted the rebellion on this planet, it was no wonder he had never heard of it. This group didn't even look capable of filling out the ranks of a dome softball and Soma league. He nodded politely.

"And you?" Bril seemed hell-bent on being welcoming. "I understand you're a systems analyst?"

"Uh, actually, I work in physical plant."

"Physical plant…?"

"I'm an air conditioner repair man."

"Oh." This finally seemed to give Bril pause. He rallied quickly after, giving Chevron a companionable slap on the arm. "Well, welcome to the Rebellion!"

After multiple comm transfers and a great deal of yelling, plus three firings, President Sleer sat glowering at the Head of Special Security, staring at her guppy-faced from the monitor.

"You know how important the Chevron project is to me, personally," she hissed, a truly horrendous sound, coupled with the deadly glare she was levelling at the man.

"Yes, Madam President," he choked out. "I read the reports daily. All the tapes are reviewed. Any new contacts checked. Nothing significant has been reported."

" _Something_ has changed. I don't know what it is, but it is your job to find it and keep me informed."

"He _has_ smiled before Madam President…"

"Shut up. You may have a fourth grade ignorant rating, Commander, but I do not. Re-check everything. Kill people if you have to, but get me answers."

"Yes, Madam President." His comm snapped off with alacrity.

Chevron licked his lips. He was getting worried. Aza had been arguing with Casimir for what seemed like forever, their arms pointing and gesturing in angry semaphore. Bril gave him a bolstering smile, but Chevron didn't buy it.

He stood finally, and crossed to the small group, Bril trailing along after. Tagg saw him coming and nudged Casimir to get his attention, but not soon enough that Chevron didn't catch Casimir's last words to Aza.

"…an incredibly selfish and stupid idea. It speeds up our time table significantly, and puts us all in unnecessary danger."

"Speed up our timetable? From a complete standstill, you mean?" Aza threw up her hands. "I couldn't agree more."

Casimir flicked a warning eye at Chevron and crossed his arms over his chest, dropping his chin into a palm.

"So what do we do?" Aza pressed on, casting a look at Chevron that told him he could stay. "Put him back where we found him? We need access to his information, his skills, his knowledge of the workings of Blake's organization, and here he is, ready to do it."

"And how much of that is because he doesn't know what we're asking him to do?" Casimir shot back.

"I think I should be involved in this," Chevron said.

"Oh, don't worry," Tagg rubbed a hand over his face. "You are."

Aza turned to Bril. "How long do you need to get ready to access the security systems in the psychoanalytic wing? I'll need access to a mind-machine for several hours."

"I can be ready when you are," he answered, keeping himself slightly behind Chevron and out of the circle of intense conversation. "I can access the building's security remotely from my office in Security Headquarters."

"He is _heavily_ monitored," Casimir reminded them. They'll notice any changes in his behavior instantly."

"Then we'll sedate him," Aza shot back.

"Wait. No, you won't," Chevron put in.

Tagg shook his head. "Oh, don't be so squeamish. You're already taking in sedatives and behavior modifiers in your food and water."

"What?" Chevron blinked. Of course. The reason Aza wouldn't drink any of his coffee. He knew she had told him at the time, but somehow it hadn't been real until now, looking at the frightened faces around him.

"And the tracking device," Casimir whispered, his eyes going wide. "Oh, God, Aza, he's led them right to us!"

"It's alright. I already removed it."

"You what?" Casimir almost yelled. "You'll bring the entire Security Bureau down on our heads! Any disruption in his routine…."

"I didn't disrupt any routine. I did it in his apartment. In the shower."

Tagg choked, turning a very charming shade of purple. Chevron just sighed. At least he wasn't the only one constantly unnerved by Aza's reckless behavior.

Brill just laughed. "Clever girl, this one."

"To do something like that right under their noses?" Casimir snapped back.

"Of course. It would be more suspicious if they disappeared for any length of time. They'd have been able to track them anyway. The only way to keep the bureau from searching is to make them think they're already seeing everything. If I know anything about security monitoring teams, and quite frankly, I do - after three years of watching a depressed celibate trudging around, finally getting to see some action will be a Godsend. They'll be too busy taking up an office pool to buy him a crate of personal lubricant to notice a little blood in the shower."

He gave them all a chummy wink, but the look on Tagg's face was enough to wipe the smile away. Fast. "Well," he muttered in his own defence. "It's true."

Chevron's face turned a deep shade of red. He felt highly exposed and scrutinized. He flicked a quick look at Aza, but unlike him, she seemed unwilling to spare even an instant on something so mundane as embarrassment. He wasn't sure if he found it endearing or fanatical. Perhaps both.

"The reality is," Aza cut in, placing herself between Bril and her twin as an added safety measure, "that no matter how many objections you may have, Casimir, It's started. Forward is the only way out of this. First, we erase the memory blocks. We won't have access to his computer skills until he's been restored to himself. I'll need a few sessions."

Bril winced. "Can you do it in one?"

"Give it all back at the same time? It's dangerous. His mind might not be able to bear it. He'll be in deep shock."

"Better that having to tamper with the security system more than once," Bril warned.

"What about getting access to a computer terminal?" Aza asked.

"Not at work. Too open. I could possibly set one up here."

"That has access to the system?"

"No, not exactly. But If I could install a link to my computer, he could gain remote access to the system when I'm not there. That way he could continue to work at his day job, and have system access here a few hours at night. I can't think of another way to keep from alerting suspicions."

Casimir's eyes darted back and forth between Aza and Bril, doing his best to follow the excited discussion.

"And if it works?" Casimir asked.

Aza smiled. "Then we have enough money to buy all our ways off-world."

"Wait a minute," Chevron found the dawning realization of what they wanted from him somehow insulting. "That's my contribution to your cause? A bank heist?!"

"Yes." Aza was firm. "Among other things."

Casimir was pulling his lip again, deep in thought. He glanced up suddenly at Aza's last words, as if they had taken a moment to process. The look of anger in his face was unmistakable.

"Now, hold on. And am I in charge here, or is it you-" he took a step towards her, and Chevron moved before he was aware of it.

His hand lashed out and grabbed Casimir's below the elbow, pushing and twisting the arm behind the leader's back as Chevron stepped into him, using his hip to block the older man's ability to pull away. The hold was messy, but effective. He pulled Casimir's arm up slightly, making him gasp in pain. Chevron rammed his knee into the back of Casimir's and the join gave easily, sending him crashing helplessly into a kneeling position on the floor. It was over in a matter of seconds. Chevron found his arm raised, ready to fall brutally on the man's tender neck. In a haze he could hear yelling, sense movement, and his breath left him as a sturdy force hit him in the chest.

Tagg shoved Chevron back, grabbed him by the shoulders and slammed him into the wall behind them. There was a moment of mute surprise, and then Aza was there, trying to stop them, pulling at her brother's arm. The rebels from across the room ran towards them, already lagging behind the action, while Casimir rolled himself onto his back, struggling to sit up. Bril stood with his mouth hanging open in surprise.

Tagg was leaned in so close Chevron could feel the heat of his breath across his face. He did his best to shake off the haze and understand what was happening, but nothing made sense. He wasn't a violent man. He'd never even thrown a punch before that he knew of, let alone manhandle a full-grown body to the ground.

"I'm sorry," he stammered, "I don't know how I…"

"Save it." Tagg growled at him, shaking him by the tunic-front until his teeth chattered together.

"I must have thought he was going to hurt her. I would never…"

"Oh, no." Tagg loosened one hand from Chevron's front enough to get it free and push Aza back away from them, never taking his eyes from his captive. "Don't imagine you have feelings for her. People like you don't have feelings like that."

"People like me?"

"Cold-hearted murdering traitors," Tagg said matter-of-factly. "You killed Blake. You could kill us all if it suited you."

"I killed…" Chevron felt like a he'd been slammed with g-force. His head spun. He couldn't seem to breath through a constriction in his throat. He felt the warm and sticky residue of blood on his hands, squeezing between his fingers, and couldn't tell if it was a memory or his imagination…

 _Villas face was a comical mix of confusion and despair. "Die? I can't do that!"_

 _"_ _I'm afraid you can. It's the one talent that we all share. Even you."_

 _"_ _I think I'm going to…"_

 _The sound of receding footsteps echoed through the ships hallways as Vila ran to_ _be sick…_

Had that been his voice? When would he have said something so callous to someone? He realized that a silence had fallen in the room, and there was a hand still pressed around his throat. Over Tagg's shoulder, Chevron could see Aza cover her mouth with a pale hand. Brill helped Casimir regain his feet, and the older man brushed himself off, calming his flock with an upraised hand. "I'm alright. Tagg. Really. It was just surprising, that's all. He obviously didn't mean to. Let him go."

Tagg remained where he was, his grip almost tight enough to choke.

"Tagg," Casimir boomed. Tagg released Chevron's shirt front and stepped away, letting him stagger back to a stable footing. Chevron loosened his bunched up tunic from around his neck, keeping a weary eye on his recent attacker. Aza pushed her brother out of the way and took a possessive hold of Chevron's arm, inspecting his neck for visible damage.

"Really, you're all acting like children," she said.

"Which is what people do when they're frightened," Casimir soothed.

"I'm sorry." Tagg was hardly contrite. "But I think we should just forget this. It's far too dangerous. We don't know what he's capable of. Even he doesn't know."

"Listen, who's decision is it?" Chevron's voice cut through the others, slightly hoarse, but firm.

Casimir sent a look around to his people, but most were staring fixatedly at the floor. Even Tagg was silent.

"Well, yours, I suppose," he answered.

"Fine." Chevron finished straightening his tunic, removing Aza's hand from his arm in the process. He wanted to be standing under his own power in front of them. "When can we start?"

The silence continued. Aza sent a challenging look to Bril, who finally met her eye. "Oh, All right. I can be ready tomorrow night."

Chevron nodded. "Then so can I."

Casimir sighed. "Fine. Aza, you and Chevron keep playing happy families. Make all the arrangements you need to with Bril. Tagg, you stay with them. I suppose the rest of us had better start figuring out how we are going to get system access for our newly acquired computer genius."

"This is absurd." Tagg grumbled.

"But," Aza pointed out, "kind of exciting."

" _A woman?_ " Sleer was livid. The atmosphere in the room had turned distinctly chilly, despite the high flush that rose in her cheeks. "What do you mean, _just a woman_?"

"A woman, Madam President. She was subjected to all the standard security checks. She's one of ours."

Sleer tightened her first on her desktop, willing her anger in check. "Specify _ours_ Section Leader."

The man on screen glanced at someone obviously standing behind him, off screen. There was a murmur of low voices. He nodded and addressed himself back to the camera. "She works for the Division of Mental Alteration and Conditioning. She's Thayer's top assistant. She's been thoroughly vetted and conditioned. It also appears from the records that he approached her."

"How long have they been together?"

There was a moment of off-screen data-checking. "Three days. At no time have they been out of sight or hearing range."

"No time? Never? What have they been doing?"

"Well…"

"Well, _what_?!"

"They hold hands on the way to work."

Sleer slapped her hand down on her desk with a sharp crack. The man on screen jumped visibly.

"Section Leader Carn, do I look like your mistress?"

"Madam President?"

"Do I bear even the slightest resemblance to whatever slatternly _wretch_ has to waste her life on her back under your sorry carcass?"

"N…No Madam President."

"Then stop trying to screw me by telling me what you think I want to hear."

Carn paled. His eyes flicked back over his shoulder for a moment, before he straightened slightly, obviously trying to salvage what he was fast realizing could turn out to be a fatal situation for him. "They have been spending their nights together."

" _You were supposed to report anything out of the ordinary!"_

"He'd been alone for three years. I don't think any of the men thought it _was_ out of the ordinary for him to seek out company…"

She raised her hand, cutting him off mid-sentence, and buzzed the comm on her desk.

"Yes, Madam President?" her assistants voice came in crisply. Ah. Dependable Rai.

If she made it know that she wanted someone to sleep on the floor of the foot of the bed she knew she would wake the next day to find Rai there. Perhaps one day she would ask. However, now was not the time for such warming thoughts.

"I want my ship ready to leave for Earth immediately. Contact my personal guard, and my Psychostratagist. We leave at once."

"Yes, Madam President."

She turned back to the vid screen, eyeing the sick-looking man still swaying on his feet at attention. Who would she promote to his position after he was dead? Someone with a modicum of intelligence, hopefully.

Well. Leave it to Rai.

"I want all the relevant recordings sent to my ship at once. I will review them personally on my way to Earth.

"Yes, Madam President!"

"And Section Leader, I mean all the recordings. Whether you think they're out of the ordinary or not. I will also need a list of the names of everyone currently working on the Chevron Project. I feel a need to reallocate my resources."

She snapped the vid link off and strode out of her office towards the hangar bays, hoping it was not too late already.

"It's hard to explain." Aza said. Over the last few days she had become almost absurdly comfortable having conversations with Chevron in his shower. Strange under any other circumstances perhaps, but here and now, it seemed quite natural to be standing with him thus. He leaned back against the wall of the shower, his arm draped forward over her shoulder as she rinsed the suds out of her hair. She turned, picking up the bar of soap, and began rubbing it roughly into his beard.

"You need a haircut."

"Don't get distracted," he warned, pinching her suddenly on the hip, making her jump. "Tell me what I've got to look forward to."

"Mind-wiping is really a misnomer. Instead you introduce mental blocks that keep the subject from consciously or subconsciously accessing the memories." She massaged her fingers over his chin, dragging her thumb over his lower lip. Chevron knew a distraction when he felt one, though, and raised his eyebrows in question. She relented.

"It requires drugs and conditioning to keep the blocks in place. Removing them is a lot faster, but hardly ever done. It can be psychologically damaging. In the best case scenario, we remove one block at a time, letting your mind get used to the ability to access its past experiences. As it is, all I have to do is isolate each block, and repair the neuropathway that accesses it. If I were looking for little things, say, a certain time in your life, or a certain aspect of your personality, it would take forever. In your case however, the pathways they blocked were large. Like stopping an artery instead of mucking around with a series of veins or capillaries. Afterwards, therapy helps find a memory or a series of memories behind each of the blocked areas and causes you to seek it out, letting your own mind push through the block and re-opening the pathway there. In your case, that means literally everything, since your wipe was total."

"I'm sorry I asked."

She shrugged and applied the soap to his shoulders and chest. He watched her, noting how proprietary she was when touching him now, as though she were surveying her property. Her mountain range. Her _Sea That Has Become Known_.

He assumed it would have been disturbing to him if he had time to think about it, but no such time was afforded him. Since he had met her, she never seemed to be far away, either physically or in his thoughts, and he wondered if he'd ever felt anything like this sense of comfort before. A strong instinct to protect in order to maintain this new status quo.

He brushed water from her eyebrows, watching drops glitter in her long fiery lashes. With a smile he realized that he was feeling rather proprietary himself.

"What's that smug look for?"

"What? Oh. Nothing. I…I don't want to know why you know all this about me, do I?"

Her return smile was not encouraging. "Because of my position I have access to any file I want."

"That's an interesting way of saying it was nothing personal."

She broke eye contact with him, focusing instead on the job at hand.

"It's true that I killed Blake, isn't it?"

"Yes."

He shook his head. He appreciated that she didn't coddle him with lies, but her bluntness stung sometimes. "Then I am a cold-hearted, murdering, treacherous bastard, aren't I?"

She looked back up at him, concerned and sorry and angry all at the same time.

"It's just that I'm afraid of who I might wake up as," he pushed on in a hurry. "I mean, I might wake up someone that you don't…want to know."

Her hand pressed against the center of his chest, warm, even in the hot water of the shower, and she told him the first thing that came into her mind.

" _In order to avoid the inconveniences which seem necessarily connected with your actions, you must endeavour to be a general without an army; and to take possession of a strong city, which hath neither gates, nor ditches, nor walls; so as, that the difficulty you would meet with, in surmounting these obstacles, may not inspire you with so much rage as to make you destroy everything_."

His legs trembled slightly. "Where is it from?"

" _A Continuation of the Arabian Nights_." She smiled sadly. "No one was there but you, Chevron. No one knows what really happened on Gauda Prime. The Federation told us all a version of it, of course, but there's no way to really know. Who knows what drives a man to kill a great friend? The whole free Galaxy felt like they owned a piece of Blake, and we all felt cheated when he died." She slid her hands up his chest, hooking her arms around his neck and pillowing her head on his shoulder. "But I think you and Blake owned each other in a different way. Maybe that's worth remembering, even if it ended in pain."

He stroked his hands down her back, stopping at her slender hips, focusing on the flesh and blood of the present, the wet slide of hands against soft skin.

He felt her press closer and speak into his ear. "We have a few hours before we have to go. Any last requests?"

"I can think of one, yes, but…"

"But…?"

"Just once, it would be nice to spend time with you without the entire dome listening."

"Well that's not fair," she laughed, "how do we know you don't work better with an audience?"

Sleer had listened to it all. All the tapes of all the nights. Nothing incendiary had been voiced. Nothing treacherous planned. There was even a sharp and panful pleasure for her, listening to Chevron's fumbling. Especially the first night. Something about his vulnerability and embarrassing lack of confidence clashed so powerfully with the Avon she remembered. The man she had offered the universe to.

" _I suppose I'm just no good at this…"_

 _"_ _Don't ever say that. You are exactly as you should be…. Are you against me undressing?"_

 _"_ _I have no objections…. Slower."_

 _"_ _Would you like to touch?"_

Movement. An indrawn breath.

 _"_ _May I?"_

Silence.

 _"_ _You skin is so soft."_

A bump, scrape of feet, heavy breathing. Cloth rustled against cloth in rough hands.

 _"_ _Please don't turn around."_

Sleer smiled again, closing her eyes. She advanced the tape. Stopped it.

 _"_ _Come on. Shower."_

A few moments later and the spray snapped on. There was nothing else. Faint sounds under the water, possibly something being dropped. Minutes later a yell or growl, indistinct.

Sleer traced her eyes over the sound wave logs, finding the rise and fall of voices. Conversations about work. Vids. Coffee. They laughed together. Often. The sound grated on her. More showering.

Sleer considered the fact that she had never found showering with someone all that pleasurable. Too cramped; and she distrusted any situation where you couldn't walk away from a conversation without having to dry off first.

"Computer, stop recording." A silence fell in the cabin of the shuttle. "Isolate the sound of falling water on the recording. Filter it out."

The recording re-started, almost eerily silent now, accept for the occasional low murmur. Sleer leaned forward. "Amplify the background sound. Clean up any high or low-end interference. Restart at the beginning."

A second later the silence played again. There was movement now. Something metal on plastic. And then voices, low but distinct.

 _"_ _Well?"_ Her voice.

 _"_ _Well, what?"_ His voice.

 _"_ _Well what? Well, darling, are we making love or expecting rain?"_

"Enhance those voices." Sleer commanded. Banter, back and forth, and then _her_ voice again.

 _"_ _We're safe here, if you keep your voice low, and clean-up will be much easier."_

"Advance two minutes." She hissed.

Nothing.

"Advance five minutes."

 _"_ _How does it feel to be free?"_

A snarl. Something wet hitting against something, harsh breathing.

Sleer's fingers dug into the arms of her chair so hard that her nails cut into the fabric.

When Rai came in twenty minutes later to deliver a message to her, she was still seated, eyes

staring out the window at her side, the recording looped, and seemingly forgotten.

 _"_ _Say it again."_

A half-sob.

" _Avon_."

"Madam President?" he ventured. She did not acknowledge his presence, her silence all the heavier for the sounds of heated joining humming through the cabin. Rai shifted uncomfortably.

"Madam President, your operative in the resistance group on Earth has sent another communication. It's marked with the highest level of urgency."

He held out the data pad, unconsciously keeping himself as far away from her as he plausibly could. "They request a meeting as soon as you arrive in the capital."

She reached over without acknowledging Rai in any other way and took the data pad. Her eyes flicked through the information, and Rai watched quietly while something she read there caused her back to straighten.

"Set up the meeting. Is there any way to make this ship move faster?"

"No, Madam President."

She treated him to a level gaze. Rai took a few steps back towards the door.

"I'll talk to the Captain and see what I can do."

He fled from the room then, away from the stone-quiet woman with havoc in her eyes, and two voices, desperate and powerful, psalm and antiphon.

 _"_ _Say it again."_

A half-sob.

" _Avon_."


	5. Into the Blind World

The grate on the floor slipped aside with a sharp rasp of metal on concrete. A head topped with flaming red hair drifted up, looked around, and then Aza lifted herself out onto the cold floor.

Chevron followed more carefully. She helped him up, pulling at his shoulders. He rolled free, making room for Tagg to come after.

Aza helped him too, and brother and sister stood getting accustomed to the dark room, brushing ash and soot from each other's clothes.

Chevron rubbed at the grit stinging his eyes. The floor was almost painfully cold on his back through his light tunic. A moment later Aza was at his side, helping him onto his knees, and then to his unsteady feet.

"Where are we?" he asked, instinctively not raising his voice above a whisper. They had been crawling through narrow tunnels for what seemed like ages, accessed through another one of Tagg's charted drainage outlets, and now their hands and knees and faces were smeared with a greasy jet-black paste.

"It's the incinerator," Aza whispered back, using her sleeve to wipe the worst of the wet ash from his face.

"What?" he hissed back, unable to keep the disgust from his voice. "You mean we've been crawling through...?"

"Human remains? Only in the loosest sense, really. Nothing that would decompose."

"But I thought we were going to your lab?"

"We are. Not all of our cases are successful. If we have a death, it's far more expedient to cremate on site. The ashes are then rinsed down the drain into the dome sewer system. Makes a great back door, right?"

"We're in an oven?" Chevron repeated, not sure he was ready to believe it yet.

"Spacious, isn't it? The building is equipped with its own jail and medical lab as well. Subjects scheduled for mental alteration are transferred here twenty-four hours in advance so that we can begin administering the necessary medications."

"Drugs."

"Yes, if you like. Drugs."

Tagg felt his way over to them, fingertips colliding against Chevron's chin. Chevron grunted and jerked away.

"Sorry," Tagg muttered. "This is all very interesting, Aza, but how in the hell are we getting out of here?"

"The door locks from the outside. I left it open when I finished work today. As long as no one's helpfully come along and closed it again, we should be fine."

She shuffled over to the wall, gliding her fingers over it until she encountered one of the door seams. She pressed the weight of her shoulder against it, and the door swung slowly, noiselessly open.

The dim light in the anterior room illuminated the prison-cell size space they were standing in, and Aza's ironic smile. "See? No one comes to this area of the building unless they absolutely have to. Most of the business here is left to the labour class."

She gestured for them to follow her out into the sterile hallway. They walked softly, Chevron doing his best to cushion the louder thump of his right leg lagging behind the left.

On either side of them down the length of the hallway were a row of evenly spaced doors, each with a small window. The rooms visible within were empty, save for a long metal table and wall of square stainless steel doors. _Body lockers_ , Chevron realized. There were metal pegs draped with scrubs and smocks beside the lockers. The hall had a faint mortuary smell. Chevron assumed that the odor clung to one's clothing.

They continued to creep along, listening for footfalls, a door opening and closing, a distant cough. Security cameras buzzed up and down, but no alarms sounded. True to his word, Bril must have them under his control.

Aza led them unerringly through hallways and up several flights of stairs. They stopped at a formidably marked doorway at the end of a long hall and Aza slid her pass-card through the reader. A light to the left of the door buzzed green, and she yanked it open with a click.

The air inside the alteration room was still and heavy. Chevron felt his lips and throat dry painfully. Aza closed the door behind them, and all three turned together to take in the sight of the single mind machine, glowing benignly with a deep metallic sheen. Chevron had never considered how evil some inanimate objects could look. Something about the sleek lines, the overzealous luster of the machine, sickened him. As if it had been buffed.

Aza was the first to move towards it, Tagg close behind her, nudging Chevron into movement.

The technicians panel hummed to life under Aza's touch, and she spent a few moments scrolling through screens of information, feeding access codes and file designations into the computer.

"When do we start?" Chevron asked, more to break the terrible silence than because he wanted to know the answer.

"I've already started," she answered, not turning to him. "Are you ready?"

"No." He wasn't. Everything in him screamed to leave the room. To run as fast as he could back down the hallways and out of this oppressive, cloying place.

Tagg took a firm hold on his arm, gripping so hard it hurt. "Do it anyway."

Chevron licked his rough lips, looking around for anything he could use against Tagg. It didn't even have to be a weapon, at that moment he would have settled for something blunt and heavy.

Tagg hustled him forward to the reclining chair, and Chevron noticed with an edge of hysteria that there was a cushioned headrest. As if the journey to hell would be more comfortable with a complimentary pillow. His thighs struck against the side of the chair, and Chevron froze, unable to will himself to sit or draw away. A strangled sound broke from him, and Aza looked up quickly, catching the animal fear in his eyes.

"Tagg, let him go."

Tagg hesitated for a moment, but then dropped his hand from Chevron's arm. Aza came around the machine to stand with Chevron, shooing her brother away with a stern look. Tagg crossed to watch the door instead.

"Deep breaths," she told him, stroking a light hand down his arm. "I'm right here."

"What do you need me to do?" Chevron finally managed to ask.

"Just sit, I'll do the rest."

"And what if it drives me mad?"

"Then I promise I'll kill you before you have a chance to endanger any of our lives." Tagg called from across the room. Chevron gave Aza a pointed look. The sweat stood out on his forehead. His palms were like ice.

Aza turned him and pressed him gently down into the chair.

"I know you don't remember it, but you've done this before." Her voice was soothing. He felt his body follow her lead. _Of course_. He thought. This is why it had to be lovers. Just friends wouldn't do. He would never have allowed himself to be pushed back, laid out supine in the stiff chair. She began to set and tighten the straps around his feet, then his thighs. It had to be someone with a claim to his body. Someone that he had willingly given up partial ownership of himself to.

He felt a spark of hatred flare in his heart for her. At the same time, he wanted to cling to her, draw her closer against the fear of the coming unknown.

Her hand brushed across his forehead, stroking his hair repeatedly back from his face. _Like an animal_ , he realized, as she strapped down his chest. _Gentled by a kind word and a touch_. He couldn't run now if he'd wanted to.

Aza brushed her fingertips across his lips, willing her mind away from the familiar pictures this was calling up in her head.

She had never witnessed this next step first-hand. She had removed her own blocks, a terrible challenge in itself, but she had not had to look at her own writhing body. Or seen the expression of horror or pain. Afterwards, after only a few minutes, it had stopped, and she had rolled free, vomited all over the floor, and then curled up into a corner of the lab, weeping hysterically, unsure where or who she was. After the shock had worn off, there had just been nausea, depression, and the feeling of complete drain. Horrifying, but worth it.

She had realized that the first time she had been able to think whole-heartedly against the Federation. She had seen them for the murdering scheming bastards that they were. And she had seen her husband again as well. Just as he had been. Confused and fallible, but whole, a man who wanted something better for them. And for their child, now dead, because the Federation made no allowances based on age or innocence. She had wept for them, two of the people she had loved the most, and who for the longest time had been unable to think of as anything but traitors. They were garbage to be removed. Even her two-year-old son.

Finally, she was able to look at the past with love, and regret, as a human should. The ability to morn had been overwhelming at first, but in the end one of the most fulfilling experiences of her life. She hoped the same would be true for Chevron, but she knew he wouldn't thank her for it.

She tugged at the sleeve of her tunic, and the stitches gave with a satisfying rip. He watched her mutely as she twisted it into a rough braid.

"You think I'll…"

"Scream? Yes. They all do."

His eyes darkened, and he gave an involuntary jerk back. She brought her face close and kissed him, breathing calm into his mouth, stilling his muscles with a gentle stroke of her tongue. When she pulled back her eyes were steadying.

He opened his mouth and she inserted the gag. With a final squeeze of his hand she disappeared out of his line of sight.

The rest she did methodically, schooling herself against looking at the body in the machine. She drugged him with a hypodermic to the jugular, placed the sensor pads across his head and chest, and initiated the staring sequence.  
The computer chirped as it began the process, and Chevron let out a strangled yell. His body snapped ridged, arching up off the chair like a strung bow. His teeth ground into the gag. Sweat dripped across his face. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides.

"Jesus" Tagg said, coming closer, a disturbed look on his face. "This is what you do here, Aza?"

"Not usually. Putting the blocks in doesn't look much better, though. The drugs will weaken his mind's ability to self-protect. Breaking down all the conditioning is hurtful, and he'll try to reject it. We've just made that impossible for him."

Tagg found himself staring in fascination, even though the better part of himself knew he should look away. No one wanted this on display. Chevron's body tremored and writhed under the sensors pads, heels trying to scrape some kind of hold out of the chair's footrest.

Tagg turned back to the door, opening it slightly and peeking out into the hall. Still empty.

* * *

It took almost half and hour. By the end both Tagg and Aza were ill. Their ears echoed with choked-off screams. Tagg had given up early and covered his ears, turning his face to the door and refusing to look.

Aza gritted her teeth. When she finally shut the machine down the man in the chair collapsed into a limp soaking pile. She stripped the damp sensor pads off and threw them away. His head was flopped to the side, resting in his shoulder, eyes closed. She touched his cheek, tracing a circle through a swirl of facial hair. He stirred, and she unfastened the gag, drawing it out from between his teeth with some difficulty. The fabric was almost entirely bitten in half. His head stirred and rolled towards her.

"Aza," Tagg called, "do you hear something?"

Chevron's eyes opened, hard shards of agate in a relaxed face. He blinked at her once, and Aza drew back. Instead of the warm liquid brown pools she had become accustomed too, a total stranger stared back at her now, with eyes full of hate, and a touch of madness. The look passed quickly, but in it's place left only distain.

"Aza, I hear footsteps. Lots of them," Tagg called again from the doorway, ducking his head back in from the hall. "They must know we're here. We have to go."

"Kerr Avon?" she asked this new man, stretched sacrificially before her.

The corner of his mouth twitched microscopically upward. "You were expecting someone else?"

His voice had changed, she noticed with a wince. Any trace of softness was gone. It was a smooth voice, almost oily, with class and education behind it. She could tell he was confused as well, eyes now darting around, and she hoped that accounted for some of the angry growl.

A tongue peeked out and circled his chapped lips. "Do you intend to let me go?" he asked. The initial bravado was wearing off, the effects of the drugs and mental tampering starting to settle on him. His already pale face was tinged with green. The smell of rank, fearful sweat pouring off him. All his limbs seemed to be trembling out of control.

She undid the straps, freeing him to sit up. He seemed unable to move without her help. Tagg raced over, grabbed a shaking arm and yanked him up with a jerk, missing the poisonous glare Avon threw him.

"The troopers are coming. We need to get out. Now."

"I don't think he can walk on his own," Aza said.

"Leave him, then."

"No."

Aza hooked Avon's arm over her shoulder, struggling to stand under his greater weight. Tagg swore and took the other arm, helping her lift him from the bed.

"Hurry," he commanded, starting for the door as fast as he could.

"Wait," Aza cried, struggling to keep up. I haven't had time to shut down the computer. They'll know what were doing."

"It's too late for that now, we need to get out."

Tagg pulled open the door and dragged them all through. In the hall, the sound of tramping feet was louder, just around the corner. As the three of then reached the end of the hall and turned Aza caught a glimpse of several black-clad bodies rounding into the corridor.

Tagg increased his pace. A blaster bolt struck the wall behind them, showering sparks and stinking of discharged electricity. An alarm blared. Footsteps thundered in the hallway to their right.

A door swung open in front of them, and more Federation troopers gushed out. Aza hauled them left down an adjacent hall. Avon's limp was dragging them farther and farther behind. Aza swiped her pass card through the reader on the door at the end of the hall, slamming it shut behind them. A few seconds later the hall was full of troopers, guns already up to fire at the locked door.

"This is not going to work," Aza panted. "We can't move him fast enough."

"Drop him. You and I can make it." Tagg answered quickly.

"I'll stay." Aza said, transferring her share of Avon's weight onto Tagg." I know the building better, and can lead them away from you. The crematorium is straight down this hall, then to the right. You'll recognize it as soon as you turn the corner."

"I am not leaving without you." Tagg had to yell to be heard above the blaster bolts hitting the door.

"Then you'll die with her," Avon said, his head now resting against Tagg's chest, unable even to lift it. He had no idea how his legs were keeping him up. Adrenaline and sheer bloody-mindedness he supposed. He was dimly aware that Aza was shoving against Tagg, trying to force him into movement.

"Get him back to Casimir, or it's all been wasted, Tagg."

Tagg shook his head, digging in like a mule, and Aza slapped him across the face. Tagg looked more shocked than hurt.

"I don't want you here," she ground out at him, and turned and ran in the other direction from the crematorium. Tagg swore colourfully after her, then half-ran, half-dragged Avon towards their escape route. They turned the corner, and Avon dimly remembered the sight of this long row of symmetrical doors.

Behind them, they heard the door give way, and then Aza's voice, shouting something. More blaster bolts followed, and her voice went silent.

* * *

Tagg got them into the incinerator, pulling the door shut behind him, and dropped Avon in a heap to the floor. He stuffed him head and shoulders first through the still-open grate, and then followed, pulling the grate back into place behind them, doing it by feel in the utter dark.

Avon was in a sickly panic. Trapped suddenly in a long black tunnel, slick and wet, his nostrils assaulted by a sharp burnt odor. Something pushed him from behind, jamming him further down the tube, and the combination of nausea and confusion made him vomit. His head pounded. Where was he? What was happening? Colors and images seemed to arch across his eyes. Other tunnels, other people, a sudden surge of pain in his head and gut. He tried to curl into the fetal position and clutch his head, but there was no room.

 _He was in a tight cell now, no light, no food, his body broken and left to freeze on a cold cement floor. The Federation torturers would be back soon. They would blind him with light, crush his bones one by one, apply the laser scalpels to the tender parts that hurt the most. One of them kept promising that one day he would cut out Avon's eyes._ _He screamed at the thought, and the sound echoed off the tight walls._

He was screaming now, shaking and sobbing.

"Stop it!" Tagg growled. "Keep moving."

Avon didn't know which direction he was facing. Where the voice was coming from. He was dying alone. But not silent.

"Shut up!" Tagg could tell he was not getting through to Avon. Aza had not had time to sedate him, and he knew that had been an important part of the plan. Now he could see why.

He crawled forward to reach the writhing man's head, literally climbing over Avon's thrashing body in the close confines of the tunnel. He came level with his head in the darkness, and struck out as hard as he could, catching Avon in the jaw. It did nothing to halt the noises.

Tagg pressed Avon's head to the ground, clutching him by the hair, and hit him again behind the ear. And again. And again, until the other man's struggling stopped. The cries died away to moans, and then nothing. He delivered another blow, and the body beneath him finally went limp. Tagg realized it was the sound of his own breathing that was ragged now, pounding back at him in the small space, He concentrated on getting himself under control, crawling the rest of the way ahead of Avon so that he could start the long process of dragging him out behind him.

All of which would give him ample time to plot the death of Levin Bril, who had obviously betrayed them, and thank whatever Gods there were that Aza had been too paranoid to trust anyone with the information on their method in and out of the building.

And if his sister was dead, well then Tagg would die too. But not before killing Kerr Avon, and as many Federation troopers as he could.

* * *

Aza came awake with a jerk. Something was holding her down, cutting into her biceps and hips. She remembered the long white octagonal hall of the alteration building, the door giving way in a cloud of smoke and blaster fire. She had run, full out, yelling ahead as she did, as if to someone already ahead of her and out of sight.

The tramp of feet had followed her, harsh breathing through helmet respirators and then a scorching pain had bloomed on the back of her thigh, throwing her off-balance. Another bolt caught her square in the back, sending her flying forward, landing face down on the hallway floor. She could hear yelling, and then boots rushing past her to search for Tagg and Avon. She realized dimly that the blasters must have been set on stun for her still to be alive. Someone was yelling, and then rough hands were grabbing her shoulders, flipping her over, and a boot came to rest on her shoulder, grinding her hard into the ground. She fluttered for a moment between the sterile lights of the hall and complete darkness, and then lost consciousness.

There was a hum beside her now. Some kind of machine. She opened her eyes slowly. Tubes ran from the machine into her arms and the side of her chest. This was no medical unit. She recognized all the medical centers in the dome, as she had to deal with them regularly. No. This was something different.

A door slid open at the far side of the otherwise empty room, and Aza's heart stuttered as she recognized the uniform of the Federation Interrogation Unit. There was only one woman here today, but the markings on her sleeve revealed that this was someone special.

The woman crossed the room to her at an efficient pace, stopping at the edge of the flat couch Aza was strapped to. The woman loomed, swept Aza with her eyes, and checked a few read-outs on the machines still beeping monotonously in the background. Her blonde hair was tied back tightly from her sever face.

Aza felt her skin crawl. It was almost as bad as the intense ache in her back and leg.

"I am Depner." The woman informed her. "And you are Azarine Flynn."

Aza said nothing, merely pressed her lips together tightly and looked away. She was unable to move her head very far. There must be a strap over her forehead as well, but she averted her eyes, glaring at the ceiling instead.

A tight smile drifted over Depner's face. "Come now. Belligerence will get you nothing. You _are_ Azarine Flynn. You work in the Department of Alteration and Correction, and you are a traitor."

"On the contrary, I've always been unswervingly loyal to my beliefs." Aza knew she shouldn't speak at all, but perhaps it would bide her some time, stave off the pain a few extra minutes. She knew that things could only have gone this wrong if the Federation had known where to look for them. Someone had informed the authorities of their plan. Bril's kindly saturnine face came into her mind, a shy smile quirking the corners of his mouth.

"You are realizing that you have been betrayed." Depner said. "It's true. At this moment almost everyone you know and love is dead. Or worse. And soon you will tell me everything I want to know. You will not be able to help yourself. The only question is how much pain you will choose to endure before you do. Because pain is a choice here. You know that. I will only do what you force me to do."

"I'm not giving you any names." Aza said, trying to keep her eyes focused above and beyond Depner's shoulder.

"Who said I wanted names? I already know about your organization. We have someone, you see, who tells us these things."

Aza refused to say his name. She would not be tricked so easily.

"You are thinking that it is Levin Bril."

She couldn't help the quick cut of her eyes back to the tall pale woman, who's face reminded her of a Grecian statue, pale and austere.

"But Levin Bril is dead," Depner continued, "we caught him at his computer console, and shot him through the head. He is no longer worth either of our concern."

Aza felt the sickness rising in her throat. Bril would have come willingly. She could think of no one more eager to please than him. He had never had a violent thought in his life, save the few he had indulged against the Federation, and even then, Aza wondered how many of those had been placed there by her own influence over him.

"So who is left?" Depner considered. "It could be Holburn, Waitstill, Lana…" Her eyebrows raised.

"Listen, why waste time torturing me, if there's nothing you want to know? Just kill me and get it over with." Aza tried to sound confident.

Depner looked positively insulted. "Please. Torture is never a waste of time. And in this case, it will be my positive pleasure. I never said I knew everything. There is something I very much want to know. Something that you are in a unique position to tell me about."

"Well?"

"Have you ever heard of an interrogator named Shrinker?"

For the first time Aza saw a flicker of an expression cross Depner's face. It was not a light-hearted one. There was more malevolence in that flicker than seemed possible.

Aza felt her hands begin to shake. Of course she had heard of Shrinker. No one knew where he was now, but the fact that Kerr Avon had endured five days or torture and then calmly disappeared out of the Federation's top security holding cells with the man was a matter of unending embarrassment to the Interrogation Division.

The incident had quickly become one of the Resistance's top pieces of repeated lore, growing more fantastic with every telling, and had brought delight and pride to the movement at a time when things had seemed darkest.

"The name is not unfamiliar," Aza admitted grudgingly.

Depner's eyes flashed again, and her lip curled upwards off straight white teeth. "Shrinker was a colleague of mine. He taught me a great deal that I am thankful for. For this reason, and many others, I want to know the location of Kerr Avon?"

"Who?"

"Your lover. Where is he?"

"I have no lover by that name. I'm a widow."

"We are in possession of certain tapes, Azarine Flynn. Shall we listen to them together? They are most amusing."

"I'm glad to have brought you a smile, but the man I believe you are referring to is called Chevron. He's a physical plan worker in the control sector, and our relationship is none of your business."

Depner pressed a button on one of the monitors. A shocking pain lanced through Aza's head, traveling down her spine all the way to her toes. She arched against it, screaming, despite her best efforts not to. The pain stopped, and Aza slumped back to the hard couch, gritting her teeth. She felt tears stinging behind her eyes, but took several deep breaths, willing herself to remain calm.

"That is a very low intensity," Depner said. "Now, where is Kerr Avon?"

"I do not know anyone of that name. The only man I know is named Chevron."

"Chevron what?"

Aza gave her a wane smile, mostly teeth. "First name on file."

Depner smiled back. "Oh, good. I do so hate it when I don't get a chance to use all my considerable skill."

She turned a dial up and pressed the button again.

* * *

Tagg staggered his way slowly back through the streets to the meeting place, dragging Avon behind him.

Avon had regained consciousness, but seemed otherwise completely disconnected from his surroundings. Images and feelings and pictures were swirling around behind his eyes. He recognized almost none of them at this point, but his body was reacting with a strength that frightened him. He hated, felt intense love, fear, betrayal. One moment he was standing at a console of an alien ship, hands deftly working the controls, and the next his fingers stroked through long golden hair, body languid and sated.

Words and phrases and conversations assaulted him without context.

A man with tight curly hair and flashing blue eyes, leaning closer and closer into Avon's face, bright teeth flashing as he sneered " _When you found me on the Liberator it was quite a blow. And every time you look at me it hits you harder, doesn't it? I'm faster than you. And I'm sharper. As far as it goes I've made a success of my life. But you? The only big thing you ever tried to do you failed at. The greatest computer swindle of all time, but you couldn't quite pull it off, could you? If it hadn't been for Blake, you'd be rotting on Cygnus Alpha right now! No, you failed, Avon. But I win. Not just at games. At life."_

Avon flinched, hands scrabbling before him, hitting out at Tagg, who shoved him away hard. And then memories of Tarrant, only Tarrant, legs tucked awkwardly under him, blood smeared across his young face and curly tangled hair.

"For God's sake, we're almost there," Tagg hissed. Avon shook his head, trying to bring himself back to the present. It seemed an unending reality of heaving lungs and burning darkness. Where was he?

Tagg continued to pull him along, whispering back over his shoulder. "Keep it together a little longer, will you? _And for what it's worth, I have always trusted you, from the very beginning."_

"What?"

"Shut up, Avon, do you want to get us killed?"

Tagg maneuvered them both across the street and pulled them into the drainage tunnel. Here he paused, dragging in breath, looking around for danger in the cold stone shadows.

Avon's eyes adjusted slowly to the darker interior. He looked right, and saw a woman - chained to the brick wall beside them, severely cropped black hair floating above an alabaster face and neck, in bloom with purple bruises. Avon reached out for her throat, fighting the urge to crush and kiss in the same breath.

 _"_ _Is that it? Have you murdered your way to the wall of an underground room?"_

His voice, becoming ever more familiar. Had he spoken out loud? Was that the question he asked? The most important thing he wanted to know in a world of twisted attraction, degradation, and hot blood? She was beautiful under his pressing hand, still powerful, even in surrender _._

 _"_ _It's an old wall, Avon. It waits. I hope you don't die before you reach it."_

Tagg pulled him across to the next tunnel, leaving the shivering female figure behind. When Avon looked back, she was gone.

They shuffled through the dirt-floored tunnel, and came to a stop at the entrance to the water treatment room. Tagg reached out to open the door. Avon grabbed his wrist suddenly, some animal fear propelling him into action.

"What…?" Tagg started.

Avon hissed for him to be silent, tapping his own ear. Tagg held his breath, willing his heart to stop thundering so loudly. There was a soft scuffling coming from inside the water treatment room.

Tagg leaned his head against the closed door, straining to hear. Waitstill. He could hear Waitstill's voice, crying. And then the scuffing of boots again. Suddenly there was a flurry of blaster shots, and the screams of several voices.

Tagg jumped back as a solid force slammed into the door that he was pressed against, and then the scrabbling of fingernails, getting weaker and weaker. A woman, judging by the voice, sliding down the walls, trying to keep herself upright, failing.

Tagg's firm grip gone, Avon followed the sound down, collapsing into a sitting position, still leaning against the partition.

"Lana?" Tagg whispered to him.

Avon nodded his head. Yes, Anna. He was going to be sick again. Thankfully he was past caring about the mess. The air smelled too sharp. The tang of his own sweat was overpowering. His eyes burned.

 _"_ _Why do I never know what you're thinking Avon?"_

Was that Anna? Naked save for a silver sheet, somewhere on the other side of this wall? His mind reached out for her, seeking comfort.

 _"_ _I could never say it."_

 _"_ _Not even to me?"_

 _"_ _Especially not to you."_

 _"_ _Do you trust anyone? Do you trust me?"_

 _"_ _Oh, yes. I'm afraid I do."_

There was hot, slick desire, and then another twisted body for the growing heap, shot by his gun, dead in his arms, dropped to the floor to cool until someone else found her and disposed of the remains. Anna. That's how he had killed Anna. In the midst of her confessions of love.

There was a crashing sense of loneliness, coupled with exhaustion and pain. Above all, there was Blake. Bloody, clinging to his shirt on the slow slide down to the floor. Avon's name, the last thing to pass his lips. With the warmth of blood on his hands, it was impossible not to accept the responsibility of shepherding his friend through the tender indignities of death.

 _No one ever loved you as I did, Blake. No one may kill you but me. No one has that right but me._ And then loss. No friends, no love, no warmth or good humor. Even Vila, the flea, gone from his ear. Thick sobs rolled through his chest, but his eyes remained dry. Kerr Avon did not waste tears on the dead.

Tagg braced both hands on the wall, head hanging low. The sounds of gunfire and muffled screams and sobs were silenced from the other room. Only the tramp of booted feet was left, and then even that was gone.

Tagg moved to open the door.

"What are you doing?" Avon's voice cut through the silence.

"I'm…I've got to make sure no one survived. If they did…"

"No one survived. If you go it there they'll kill you too. They'll have left a sentry."

"But, I can't just leave them like that…"

"Like what? Dead? I promise you, your friends won't hold it against you."

"But, they were…"

"What?" Avon found himself laughing quietly, though he wasn't quite sure at what yet. "How did you think this was going to end?"

"Maybe they weren't all there?"

Avon shook his head, as a parent does at an idiot child. He fought to get to his feet, overbalanced, and sunk back to his knees, breathing in huge sick lungfuls of air. "We need somewhere to hide," he said, having the distinct feeling that this had all happened before somehow, many different faces, but the same situation.

"My apartment is not safe. Neither is yours or Aza's. We need somewhere unconnected to you both."

"Maybe Bril…?"

"Bril will be dead as well."

Tagg grabbed Avon's tunic front and dragged him to his feet, then took a few steps back, looking around as if he was seeing the tunnel for the first time. Avon watched Tagg's hands shake. There was a violent light shinning in his eyes that Avon recognized, as he recognized the significance of the twin's hands rising and falling, fisting at his sides.

"Go ahead," Avon said, "lash out. You'll feel better."

"You'd know."

"Yes, I would. Revolution doesn't favor the faint of heart. If you can't stand a little blood on your hands, then you should never have started this."

Tagg's first collided with Avon's face, rocking his head back into the stone wall behind him. The sharp butt to the back of the head left Avon reeling, a sterile cotton taste in the back of his mouth. He shook his head a few times to clear it, and wiped with an uncoordinated hand at the trickle of blood running from his lips over his chin.

"Good," Avon nodded. "Good. That's the spirit. Take as many with you as you can. Then maybe you'll be remembered _for_ something, instead of dying like a lamb in some basement somewhere."

Tagg left Avon leaning against the wall, taking a few steps away, rubbing his temples with his thumb and forefinger. "Shit. That did feel good." He leaned against the wall across the passage from Avon. "I need to find out what's happened to Aza."

"Who?"

"My bloody SISTER!" Tagg picked up a rock and hurled it at Avon, catching him in the stomach. The older man flinched away, protecting the spot with a wave of his hand. His eyes, when he met Tagg's, were scornful. "Fine. Waste as much time as you want, just leave me out of it."

Tagg stared at him in wonder. "You really are a bloody arrogant, unfeeling bastard."

Avon glared up at him from under his lashes, his other hand sliding across the wall, steadying himself. Tagg grabbed Avon by the shoulder of his tunic, dragging him after as they hurried back towards the street. "There's a man in the Delta section that Aza and I know. Come on."

"Of course," Avon grumbled, struggling to keep his feet under him. "Lead the way."

* * *

Aza sank and rose on waves of pain. Sometimes riding the crest, other times drowning in screams until there was only black. She found a strange euphoria at one point, the pain so constant that her body mistook it for pleasure. And then she sank again. Through it all, there was only one question.

"Where is Kerr Avon? Where would he go? We know about the water treatment room. Where else?"

"I don't know anyone by that name."

"Tell us about Chevron, then. Where did you meet?"

"In the park."

"And what do you talk about, with Chevron? Do you share a common goal?"

Aza clamped her jaws closed. Depner smiled and lifted her finger again. She liked to make Aza watch the slow drift down to the button. So far they had only used electronically induced pain, fed right to the nerve centers of her brain. But she knew that would end soon. Soon the physical work would start. The beatings, the maiming, the threats of degradation and shame.

"What will you do if we ruin that pretty face?"

"Spend more time on my elocution."

"He's not coming for you, you know, Azarine. He's already killed your brother, and left you for dead."

"Then kill me."

"Oh, no. We wouldn't do that. Not on purpose. And if it happens, then we'll simply revive you and start all over again. It's you who are making us do this to you, Azarine. You're the one in control. Tell us where Kerr Avon is and it will all stop."

"I don't know anyone by that name."

"Do you know what Shrinker's favorite technique was?"

"Flowers and chocolates?"

"He would burn out the subject's eyes." Depner lifted a laser probe off a nearby table and flicked it on. "You'd be amazed how quickly most people respond to disfigurement. They'll stand for pain and shame and starvation and any number of other things, but disfigure them for life, and they'll tell you anything you want to know, strictly for the favour of letting them die instead."

"At least you've confirmed my theory that they don't want me dead."

"Oh, and how's that?"

"Because threats of disfigurement only work if I'm going to live to regret my choice."

"She has a point." A silky voice called from the doorway.

Aza watched Depner's spine straighten. Someone of importance had just come in. The laser probe dropped as the interrogator gave a respectful nod of her head towards the voice at the door. Aza heard the rustle of soft cloth, and then the sharp click of high heels crossing the room. The air that came with this new person was fresh, scented like the expensive air in the Command Centers was.

This woman with the high heels smelled of power and wealth. She clicked all the way over to the table Aza was laying on, and leaned over, a bright red smile stretched over her pale white face. Aza recognized her instantly. She had seen her face staring out at her from a thousand posters, heard her voice on the vid-casts every night.

President Sleer.

"So," the President said, her voice rich and bubbling. "You're the one responsible for all this mess. I have to admit, I expected someone a little more impressive."

Aza finally turned her head fully to look Sleer in the eye. She had hoped that her first meeting with the President would have these roles reversed, but it was a little late for wishes at this point.

Sleer took it all in. There was a strong smell of ozone in the air, sweat, and the faint sharp odor of urine. Still, no permanent harm done, just yet. The President always let it be known that first blood should always go to herself, if she was going to be part of the proceedings. She gestured for the recently abandoned laser probe on the table, and Depner fetched it for her, laying it reverently across her waiting palm.

"Is she talking yet?"

"No, Madam President. We're just getting warmed up."

Sleer frowned. "Well don't be all day about it. My time is valuable."

She surveyed Aza again, flicking the laser probe dreamily through her fingers as she did. This was the woman who had turned Avon's head? Her body was small and lithe, with arresting eyes surely, but without the edge of violence that Sleer was used to feeling coming from Avon in palpable waves. What she had heard of Azarine on the conversation tapes at Chevron's home had been caring, at times almost maternal. She led firmly, but without threat. She struck Sleer as boring. Beautiful, but hardly able to keep Avon's attention for any length of time.

Then again, she supposed Avon had not been himself lately. Who should know that better than herself? She could hardly expect him to keep his good taste in women after she had erased his taste in everything else. The thought that he was close was intoxicating. The game was starting again, and she was just now coming to realize how much she had missed it.

Which all left Azarine Flynn in the unenviable position of having had something that Sleer had not. Kerr Avon. As much as they had flirted, she had never had Avon. It would have been that way, she assumed. She would have had him, not let him have her. She knew he liked the feeling of power, but knew also that like most men, his control was balanced on a thread easily snapped. Did this red-headed woman know the secret places to apply the sheers?

Sleer considered asking, for a moment, but dismissed the idea immediately. It was a useless question, and a weak one.

Aza watched the play of emotions across the President's face, and understanding dawned swiftly. Jealously was the most dangerous feeling that could have entered the room, and now that it was here the real pain would begin.

Sleer snapped the probe on. "I will give you one more chance to tell us where Avon is, and then I will start cutting."

Aza gathered what saliva was left in her mouth and spat it at Sleer, aiming at her face. It fell short, only hitting one of Sleer's exposed shoulders. Sleer nodded. She held out her hand again and Depner placed a towel in it. Sleer wiped off the spot of moisture absently, never loosing her smile. "Your loyalty is touching, but I assure you, unreciprocated. Perhaps your Chevron would have tried to help you, but my Avon will not. He is not coming back for you. His life is far more important that yours, and he knows it. With each passing moment he regains more and more of himself. You become a weaker and weaker shadow, and he will not hesitate to leave you behind."

"So I've heard."

Sleer shrugged. She raised the probe over Aza's face, and then paused, brow furrowing. "Which part of you do you think Avon liked best?"

Aza swallowed. "I don't know anyone by that name."

"Take a guess."

"My compassion?"

Stupid Aza, stupid, stupid, stupid. But she couldn't help it. This was her death, and damn if she was going to let it pass without at least some kind of primal action. She'd lie if she had to.

"I bet it's your skin," Sleer continued. "Or your eyes. Did he ever compliment your eyes?"

"I don't know the man. I do know one thing that my Chevron hated, though"

"Oh?"

"Black hair."

Sleer lost her smile in a snarl. "You think I'm going to kill you, don't you? How unimaginative you must think me. No. I will happily disfigure you. And then send you back to your own machines, to wipe you clean. You'll be a drooling pile of flesh by the time I'm done with you. And then it's Cygnus Alpha for you. Or perhaps I'll keep you. Tucked away somewhere menial. Wherever will give me the most pleasure."

"And you claimed to have a good imagination." Despite her best efforts, Aza's voice wobbled.

Sleer took a hold of Aza's face and stroked the laser down into her flesh.

Despite having her teeth ground together Aza screamed.

The sick smell of burning flesh came to her nostrils, and a warm rush of blood ran down her face into her mouth.

Aza swallowed reflexively, and realized the worst had finally arrived.


	6. Hither, Thither, Downward

The streets of the Delta sections were humid and dark. The damp air clung to the insides of the nostrils, smelling of wet paper and decomposing garbage. The byways and alleys were narrow, overhung by large apartment blocks, where slatternly women still insisted on hanging laundry between the buildings on lines, as if in some nod to their first calendar counterparts.

Shops were small and cramped, manned by Deltas, for Deltas, and neon was still used here, in tavern signs and advertisements. It cast shimmering multi-coloured streaks across the standing puddles in the pavement.

Avon's foot splashed into one of these, and he jerked his boot back out, shaking off the excess water. Tagg was hurrying on in front of him, and he had to quicken his lopsided pace. Nowhere in any of his resurfacing memories, could he find the answer to where he acquired the injuries that gave him this damnably irritating limp.

He was also dealing with an appalling feeling of déjà vu. He knew as a prime Alpha specimen, he should have no reason to recognize the sights and smells of the dome's lower levels. There were restricted Alpha areas, and Alphas restricted themselves to them. But as an embezzler, which Avon now realized he was, and a prospective buyer of stolen identities, he was probably more familiar with the mass of labyrinthine Delta streets than Tagg was. Not a piece of information he was eager to divulge to his companion unless absolutely necessary. Avon found himself falling more and more into what he now realized were old habits. The sarcastic reply, a certain sneer than his face seemed to fall into of it's own accord. A pathological need to keep his cards close to his chest. And why did he feel like the last time he left this place, it would have been at a run?

Complex circuity schematics kept running through his head, and he could suddenly tell down to the last vem how much each person's jewellery would fetch on the black market. Disconcerting to say the least.

"We're almost there," Tagg called back quietly.

"How is it that you know this man again?"

"He's originally a contact of Aza's. I think he was one of the first alterations she did on her own, and of course, because she's Aza, she had to let him off easy."

"In what way?"

"I think she was supposed to get rid of most of his childhood memories, implant a new love of the glorious Federation."

"And instead?"

"If I remember right she re-routed something so that he can't stand the taste of celery. Hardly terrible since I don't think any member of the Delta class has even seen a fresh vegetable in over fifty years…"

"Not very smart of her, when you think about it. To expose herself to danger simply to help a Delta grade…"

"And yet here were are, hoping he'll help save our lives…"

Avon ground his teeth together. Some people would insist on deluding themselves into seeing the unrealistically positive in any situation.

Tagg led them through a series of dog-legged alleys, and across a floating wood bridge. Avon was almost positive the sluggish liquid was raw sewage. Tagg shuddered, looking over the side of the bridge at it. "Charming," he muttered.

Gravel scraped behind them, and Avon threw a look back over his shoulder. There was no one there.

They came through a fenced off area into an enclosed square, ringed on all sides by tall buildings, housing all sorts of shops and shared apartments. It was not uncommon to find several Delta families living in what used to be a one family dwelling. The closest thing Tagg could think of to match it was Old Calendar Communist Russia - small apartments divided up one family to a room. He imagined having to walk through a family cooking and sleeping in the living room to reach the back bedroom, where his family was doing the same. Bathrooms were all communal.

"I'm pretty sure he lives just down here with his mother," Tagg continued. "In the early days I think Aza used his help quite a bit to find us all safe places to meet. That was before I came on board. He's a strange little one, but his ear is glued to the ground."

Tagg began to cross the square, but stopped when he realized that Avon had not followed him. The younger man turned back. "What is it?"

"Something's odd."

"What?"

"I don't know, but something. We should leave." Avon was darting quick looks around, peering at shadows. Tagg rolled his eyes.

"Alright, Avon, I know you're King of Subterfuge and all that, but this _is_ something I've done before."

"You mean you walk into obvious traps regularly? In that case, why are we letting you be leader?"

"Fine," Tagg gave him a dismissive wave, "don't follow. But good luck finding your way back out if this maze without me." The red-head spun an about-face and continued across the square.

Avon watched him, teeth grinding in anger. He decided he _should_ walk the other way. He bloody well should retrace his steps – something that he was more than capable of doing – and forget this stupid boy and his stupid bravado and his stupid illusions of capability. But he did remember the sister. As much as he hated to admit it, he was remembering her more and more. There had been a quality to her acceptance that he had never before experienced, and though his mind might tell him it was wrong, his body longed to recapture it. He followed the stupid bloody boy across the square.

Avon caught him at the opening to a tight passage between two of the buildings, partially covered by a rotting piece of what looked like poster board. Half of the Presidential face smiled out at them, a far off altruistic look in her clear eye. The other half of her face had been torn off.

Avon glanced around. He could have sworn he had seen a face at an upper window, but the glass was clear when he looked. The feeling of being watched settled heavily in his stomach.

Tagg moved the board aside and tilted his shoulders sideways to fit into the passage. He could feel Avon slip in behind him. The close walls made the scuffing of their feet louder, and Tagg could hear Avon's breath coming harsh and ragged. He was stumbling more than he had earlier, too. The man would not last much longer. His hallucinatory spells seemed to be lasting longer and longer.

There was a flurry of movement behind him, and Tagg turned, ready to deliver another stern tongue-lashing to the former rebel. Instead he found himself staring down the barrel of a very large and nasty-looking blaster.

Avon lay stretched out across the alley, unconscious or dead, with a long gash across the crown of his head seeping blood across his pale face and onto the pavement. Five more men stood behind the one with the blaster, all of them clothed in rags, tattered hats and coats pulled tight to keep out the musty wet. Tagg swallowed.

The sound of movement behind him told him there were more now, blocking the other side of the alley. The man with the blaster raised a bushy eye-brow. There was a pop from behind. Tagg's head exploded with pain. The world spun, and went black.

* * *

It remained black for Aza, eyes open or shut. There was something in her eyes, some thick and sticky liquid, and one side of her face burned. Her hips and shoulders hurt, numb from cold, but not cold enough to kill the pain of too long spent on a frigid cement floor. She did not resist the urge to cry. In the end, she had not been able to resist anything.

* * *

Avon took a sharp, hurtful breath and raised his head. Bad idea. The urge to vomit overwhelmed him, and sparks of pain exploded behind his eyes. His wrists hurt as well. Tugging on them confirmed his suspicion that they were bound behind his back.

A small bell chimed, and he raised his head again, very slowly, and cracked his eyelids open only slightly.

He was in the main room of what appeared to be a small shop. The bell sounded from an outer room. The interior of the cramped establishment was even muggier than it was outside. The trapped air smelled strongly of incents and heated fat. Boxes and pads, glass balls, ornaments, bowls and trinkets of all sizes lined the walls and a few sagging tables.

The floor and walls were also covered in carpets of all varieties, some that looked vaguely Oriental, while others had obviously been salvaged from anywhere and everywhere. One had a pattern of dogs ringing it in concentric circles. Ridiculous, Avon noted. Who kept dogs any more?

Beside him, Tagg stirred, but did not wake. Avon had forgotten to check for him before now. He kicked out at the still-unconscious form, catching him in the shins with a few good solid hits. They seemed to be anchored to matching wooden chairs, seated around a circular table.

Tagg hissed and raised his head, obviously instantly regretting it.

He squinted at Avon. "What the hell?"

Avon closed his eyes again and grit his teeth. "The outcome of your leadership," he said. The world seemed to be tilting further and further to one side. Nausea and panic were sweeping over him in waves, his face breaking into a sticky cold sweat.

Tagg struggled for a moment before he stopped and looked around. "Are we being held captive in a shadow den, or a knick-knack shop in hell?"

For a moment Avon was glad he wasn't free. He would have tried to strangle the other man.

A curtain on the other side of the room shimmered, admitting a bent old woman, small face almost lost under a mop of grey-white hair. She leaned heavily on a stick that might have once been a table-leg. There must have been a living space back there, an adjoining apartment, and that that was where the fried fat smells were coming from.

The woman stopped just short of them, surveying them with irises blue and round as china cups.

"Well?" she said.

Tagg threw a look at Avon out of the corner of his eye, but the older man had let his head droop forwards again, chin resting on his chest. There was, Tagg now realized, a disturbing amount of dark dried blood streaked across his face and neck.

Tagg looked at the old woman. It was hard to focus past he dull ache throbbing through his skull. "What?" he said finally.

"Say excuse me, young man. _What_ is impolite. Didn't your mother raise you to have any manners?"

"I'm sorry?" Tagg said after a brief pause, in which the woman continued to stare a hole directly through him.

"Not sorry enough, it seems. I mean 'well' as in 'Well, what do you want?' Why are you here? What important errand sends you this far down into the dome? If those boys hadn't been close-by when they found you and brought you here to ask my advice, you'd be dead and gone by now." She gave them another searching look. "I think maybe your friend already is."

"Not dead." Avon's voice was thin and raspy, but something about it made the old woman smile. She sat down at the table with them. Lacing her fingers in front of her. Her raised brows reminded them that her questions remained unanswered.

"My Name is Tagg Flynn. This is Chevron. We're looking for a man named Scurry. Bern Scurry. He used to live somewhere in the alley we were jumped in…"

"…Rescued in," the woman interrupted. "You were lucky it wasn't some of the more undesirable boys in the neighborhood who found you." Avon snorted.

"Right," Tagg interjected. My sister is Aza Flynn. She and Bern used to work together. She's been taken by the government and I need to find her."

The old woman leaned back, her face a wrinkled mask.

"I need to find her before they kill her," Tagg tried again. "We're with the resistance."

The woman's face fell shut instantly. "You're a stupid boy to admit that."

Tagg held his breath. There was a long silence, during which Avon's body sagged further and further forward, until his forehead made heavy contact with the table before him. A trickle of blood escaped from his hairline, running down to pool on the wooden surface.

The old woman turned her head back the way she had come and called through the curtain. "We need Bern here. Send him a message when you run and fetch the doctor. The good one. Not the one who only does cats and outlaws. And get us some water."

The curtain moved, and Tagg recognized the face of the man with the blaster as he peek through to nod that he had heard. Behind him, Tagg could make out a small cramped kitchen, filled with other bodies. All waiting patiently for the word from this old woman on the outcome of their interview.

His rescue crew, he realized.

The curtain dropped and there was shuffling movement beyond. The mobilization of men. The old woman raised an eyebrow and smiled at him. "I am Madam Scurry. Palmistry and Esoterica. This is my shop. Bern is my son, and I do remember your sister, although I must tell you, young man, your sister is likely dead."

Tagg swallowed hard.

"But that remains to be seen. What matters right now, is that your friend is dying. My boys didn't help, but I think there's more wrong with him than that."

Tagg cut a frightened look at Avon. His face had gone the colour of ash, his shoulders loose, even with his hands tied behind him. Madam Scurry reached across the table and ran her fingers through the tangled hair, coming away wet with sweat and blood.

"What a fool is here," she crooned. "But then, legends generally are."

* * *

Sleer took a deep breath, her eyes gliding up and down the data reader as she flipped through the electronic screens. Rai watched her closely, tip of his tongue held tentatively between his front teeth. Her anger was a wall, keeping him back from her. He tried to keep his shoulders relaxed, ready to respond to any eventuality. An insult, a precisely thrown object from her desk, demands for sexual favors, a swift blaster bolt, all had come his way at one point or another. And the presence of another person in the room did nothing to alter the possibility of any of them.

He cast his eye on the man now, perched at the edge of his chair, watching Sleer with as much attention as Rai himself. The man on the inside of the resistance group on earth.

The data pad dropped incrementally, and Sleer peered over the top, taking in both men. When she did speak, it was to Rai.

"So the tracking device has definitely been removed then?"

In answer Rai removed something from his pocket and placed it in front of her on her desk. A thin chain with a small plastic case attached.

"We found this sitting on his nightstand," Rai said

Sleer opened it. The tracking device lay inside. She dropped it to the ground and crushed it under her sharp heel. "No other news?"

Rai shook his head in the negative. Sleer's eyes slid over to the other man in the room.

Casimir pulled nervously on his lower lip.

"Your information about Avon's recent appearance was timely," she said, getting up and crossing to the window. The blackness outside gave her a mirrored view of the room. Her own silken expression, and over her right shoulder, Rai, composed, spare, almost vulnerable-looking. She felt a familiar warmth tingle through her at the memory of their former physical encounters. She found something irresistible in the barley suppressed fear she could cause to appear in his eyes.

Her expression suddenly darkened. "Our troops were unable to catch him in the Alterations building. We have patrols out combing the streets since then, but no word so far. They must have someone helping them." Her eyes cut back to Casimir. "Did she ever mention anyone?"

He shook his shaggy head. "Not by name. There was someone, early on, but she never said who. A Delta I think."

"We have the girl," Rai interjected in a quiet voice. "Won't he come to us?"

Sleer shot him a sharp glance, then shook her head. "It depends how much of himself has come back. As Chevron, he might, but Avon would never risk his life for something as frivolous as personal debt or friendship. Not unless the rewards were very high."

"And Aza is not talking?" Casimir ventured.

"Oh, yes. Torture and truth serum are a perfect combination to get almost anything a girl could possibly want. No. I'm afraid she truly doesn't know where he is."

"So we drag her back and get the name of her contact," Rai said.

Sleer nodded slightly, and then looked from her assistant back to Casimir, sitting ridged in his chair. "As usual I have a better idea. Casimir, your loyalty to the Federation has been, up until this point, exemplary. Are you ready for another assignment?"

"Of course, Madam President."

"Fine. Report back in an hour for further details. I need to sort out a few minor points with my assistant."

The chair creaked a little as Casimir stood and turned to leave. His eye caught Rai's on the way past, but the younger man was staring resolutely at the floor.

Only after the door had swished shut and the room had settled into complete silence did he dare look up. Sleer was seated behind her desk again, watching him as a predator does its prey. She lifted a languid hand and crooked her finger at him.

He suppressed a shudder as he went to her.

* * *

There was no Chevron. There was no Avon either. Just a consciousness, lifting like a bubble through water, bursting on the surface to plunge down again. And then Chevron/Avon came into being, spurred on by consciousness. And then burst and fell, and when he rose again, he was Avon/Chevron/Avon again. And again. And again. Until there was more pain than darkness, more sound than rhythm, more light than dark. He heard the voice, high and metallic, igniting a fire somewhere in his chest, but where the embers lay he still could not tell.

 _"_ _I have to live."_ She had told him that. The Alien. Or Cally. " _I've waited so long. Centuries. More time than you could comprehend. How can you imagine what it must be like to be dead? To exist in nothingness and nowhere. Blind, deaf, dumb, and yet to be sentient, aware, waiting."_

Not Cally, but Cally/Alien/Cally. Again. And he hadn't understood at all. He thought it hadn't mattered, because such a fate would never be him. His death would be final, not a terrifying transformation. He wanted Cally now, her reassuring arms around him, deceptively strong for something so thin.

 _"_ _Centuries of waiting."_

He shuddered. The voice pressed on, pulling him forward through stratas of pain and memory and more pain.

 _"_ _I have to find my world again. My people. My home. I want to breathe, and see and feel, and know. Don't send me back into the dark, Avon, Let me live."_

Avon shook himself. In his mind. In his body, fighting against the dark

 _I want to live. To live. I want to live. To live, to live._

He opened his crusted eyelids to find Madam Scurry sitting beside him. They were in a kitchen, small and drag, and she sipped what smelled like black tea out of a chipped mug. She surveyed him silently for a moment, and then nodded in agreement with herself.

"You'd better rest," she said. "I'm afraid you're going to live."

* * *

Aza could hardly move. She must have been dreaming in her sleep, and felt like she'd been sleeping in her dream, a sleep so deep in made her bones ache with the weight of it. The left side of her face was on fire, stiff, and impossible to move. She shook her head, trying to open her eyes, and something seemed to crack and fall from her cheek to the floor. She opened her right eye, but the room stayed dim and blurry. She tried to turn her head to look around, and was relieved to discover that she could. She became aware that she was laying on something cold and hard, and her shoulders were sore.

A blur came into view above her, and then slowly came into sharp focus. A woman. Older, with a soft kind face surrounded by wild shoulder-length grey hair. It looked the consistency of mown hay. There was a warmth in her brown eyes that, after hours of cruel questioning, made Aza want to cry all over again.

"Well, back with us, I see. Thank goodness. I was worried we were never going to have a proper introduction. My name is Surety Whiteway. Everyone just calls me White."

Aza frowned at the voice, so light and without care. Where was she?

"Where...?" was all she could get out.

"Guests of the Federation I'm afraid. We're in line to have our brains scrambled into a fluffy omelette of drooling submission."

"What…?"

"She means were in a cell at the Department of Mental Alteration and Conditioning," a familiar voice said. Aza struggled to sit up and find the owner of the voice, but she couldn't seem to co-ordinate any of her limbs into working together. A moment later another figure loomed over her, and she felt herself relax.

"Casimir."

"Hmmm. Afraid so."

"The Federation, they knew where to find us. I thought it was Bril who betrayed us, but they told me he was dead. Are the others…"

He put a calm hand on her shoulder and shook his shaggy head. "I'm sorry, girl, I don't know. There were troopers at the meeting place when we all arrived. I ran, but they caught me. I thought I saw Waitstill get through the door, but I can't be sure."

"And Tagg and…"

"Not there. They must be hiding."

Aza felt her shoulders relax and sag back onto the metal bench she was stretched out on. "Then who gave us away?"

"The only one I can think us is Lana. She wasn't there when the troopers came. Who knows what they offered her."

Casimir lowered himself onto the stone floor, his back leaned against Aza's metal bunk. "And now we're to be sent to Cygnus Alpha. After a complimentary mind wipe, of course." His head drifted down onto his chest, arms circled around his drawn-up knees.

Aza fought hard to steady her vision. The left side of her face was throbbing, and the taste at the back of her mouth was vile and metallic. She held out her hand, and White, now perched on the edge of the bunk, helped pull her into a sitting position, maneuvering her so that Aza's back was leaning up against the wall.

"I can't…Can someone please tell me what's happened to my face? I can't seem to see properly."

Casimir tightened his grip around his legs, but did not look at her. The older woman's face fell a little. Her eyes roamed around the room for a moment, and when they came back to Aza there was a certain amount of clinical detachment there. _Bad news then_ , Aza thought.

"It…looks like someone got a bit carried away with a laser probe recently," White finally said.

"And my eye?"

"Gone I'm afraid. And there will be significant scaring. I'm sorry darling."

Aza ran her fingers lightly over the left side of her face, and her touch encountered a mess of grooves, like a field plowed deep with furrows. The flesh was wet and raw. She hissed with pain when her hand made contact.

White stood from the bunk and crossed to the corner of the cell, where she retrieved a bucket of water, left there with a ladle dropped into it. She brought it back to the bunk and handed it to Casimir. She then tore at the shreds of Aza's one remaining sleeve until she had a small rag, and dipped it in the water.

"Let's see if we can get some of this dried blood off. We must look our best for the trip to Cygnus Alpha."

Aza winced as the older woman gently began to mop her face.

* * *

Avon groaned and turned over. His head throbbed like it was about to explode, blindness overwhelmed him. He dragged swollen hands up to his eyes and rubbed the lids, prying them apart past what felt like years' worth of sleep gluing them shut.

He was still in the Scurry's cramped kitchen, tucked under a ratty quilt on a day bed stuffed into one corner. Madam Scurry sat at the table, alone, still sipping tea as though it required a great deal of concentration. Avon's gaze shifted around the room, taking in the food processer, the jugs of drinkable water sitting on the counter. No stove, no coffee maker. These were Alpha luxuries. He took a deep breath, and his ribs ached. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, letting his bare feet touch the cold floor. He kept his hands pressed to his temples until the sickening slide of his surroundings stopped.

There were voices somewhere nearby. The curtains parted with a shimmer, and a scrawny man with a wild nest of black hair shuffled through. He stopped when he observed Avon sitting up.

"Oh, hullo. I'm Bern."

Avon glanced up, rubbing a hand through his hair. His much shorter hair. He frowned, and the other man smiled. "You don't remember do you? You were deep in post-suggestional shock. Your mind was in so much distress the chemicals in your brain were overloading all your other systems. A bit like Toxemia. It's been a few days. We thought we were going to lose you the first couple, but after it started looking like you might pull through a few of the neighbourhood girls decided you could use some cleaning up. You can thank 'em for those as well." Scurry jerked his thumb at a soft pile of clothing on the kitchen table. "Pick whatever fits. I'll tell Tagg you're back with us."

"Thank you," Avon said, having a hundred questions, but unable to ask any of them. There was only one of importance at the moment. "Where's-"

"The loo is upstairs on the landing." Madam Scurry answered as her son shuffled back out the way he'd come. "Tea is in the cupboard, synth-milk packets beside it. If you take sugar, that's in the bowl there." She gestured to a countertop, then her hands dropped back to her mug.

Avon nodded and heaved himself out of bed, wobbling up the crooked stairs to the washroom to relieve himself.

He let himself press his forehead against the wall as he did, loosing himself in a wash of bliss. He moved to the sink to wash up, and the face in the mirror stared back at him without expression. His hair was almost military short, the exposed ears and nape making him feel somehow vulnerable. There was a long gash running over the crown of his head, stopping just over his left eye. The black stitches stood out against the shiny swollen skin, raw tissue below peeking through an angry red.

He considered this new addition to his appearance, and couldn't seem to muster any concern.

His beard had been trimmed too, showing off the grey. Without hair falling across his forehead he could see the new tension lines better. The creases around his eyes and mouth more pronounced. His eyes seemed darker, his cheeks hollower. He showed himself his teeth. A reminder of the skull beneath. He splashed water in a few places and headed downstairs.

The clothes were ill-fitting but there were a few black selections, and he found himself gravitating to them. He made his own tea too strong. Damnit.

Who was it that had made the perfect tea? …Dayna. Dayna had always made him the perfect cup of tea. It was never something he expected, and there was always something secret and affectionate between them when he would wander into the kitchen area of Xenon base in the morning, and she would pass him a cup before he had to ask. Such a strange little kindness to cling to. He considered what small things he had done for her in return, but could find a memory of none.

Madam Scurry watched him mucking about in the kitchen, saying nothing, allowing him to battle through on his own. Eventually the curtain swished again, and Bern entered, Tagg following behind. They took a seat at the table, and Avon joined them, bringing his steaming mug with him. His stomach felt empty and shrunken.

Tagg watched him carefully. It was strange to see Avon like this, calmer, looking more like a hung-over roommate than a cosmic threat. He had chosen plain black pants tucked into work boots, and a soft long-sleeved black shirt. He looked painfully thin.

Over the last few days he had seen Avon cycle through an ever-changing portrait of illness, drained, pale, sometimes violently ill, vomiting and clutching his stomach, other times in a coma-like sleep, then screaming at people Tagg had never heard of.

When they had finally been able to hold him still long enough to cut away his soiled grey trousers, tunic and undershirt, the state of his body had been shocking. Tagg had never seen scars like that, and it frightened him.

It was Madam Scurry who somehow managed to make it alright. She had wiped down the tremoring body with a warm washcloth, pulled the blankets up for privacy before they found a clean pair of sleepwear for him.

"What do you suppose they did to him?" Tagg finally asked her.

"What didn't they do?" She had brushed the cloth over Avon's face then, and pushed his hair out of his eyes. "The scars give him a half-finished quality, don't they?" she mused. "Like his sculptor was suddenly called away."

Tagg blinked. He'd never thought of it like that. When he thought, it was of Kerr Avon, cosmic irony in action. So many dead, and here he was, still alive, nursing a cupa, while others still fought and suffered on his behalf. Like Aza.

"Well, Hephaestus awakes!" Tagg finally teased, figuring it was as good a place as any to start.

Avon delivered him a scalding glare.

"I thought you told me his name was Chevron?" Bern asked, confused, after a brief and silent plea for his mother to fetch him his own drink.

"Hephaestus is the Greek God of blacksmithing." Avon supplied, not glancing up from his tea. "He's also called _The Lame One_ , and _The Halting_. It's Tagg's way of reminding me how he feels about me. Besides being a renowned liar, shrewd, and crafty, Hephaestus was also reputed to be unutterably ugly."

Tagg scratched the back of his neck for a moment. "I was willing to stop at the limp, actually."

Avon shrugged. "Have we found one anything about your sister?"

"It's Cygnus Alpha for her, it seems," Bern supplied.

Avon stopped with the cup half-way to his mouth. "So she is alive?"

"For the time being."

The cup resumed its motion to his lips. "I'm sorry to hear it. No one deserves to be forced to live through what they will have done to her."

Tagg steepled his fingers in front of him. "You know, I take it back. You are unutterably ugly."

Bern spread his hands out on the table, trying to draw the attention back to himself.

"They've got her in the basement of the Department of Alterations and Corrections. Gonna mind wipe her I'd say, then send her off world. That's all there is to tell."

"When is she scheduled for?" Tagg asked, knowing her didn't really want the answer.

"A Beta I know runs the prison shuttles back and forth between the Department and the holding cells. He says his next group for Cygnus Alpha goes the day after tomorrow."

"Then it could be any time now." Tagg stood up "We have to get to her before she's wiped. Tonight would be best."

The Delta scratched his hands through his messy black hair. Finally, he said "I've heard, of course, what you folks were trying to do. Rebellion is so outdated these days, but I suppose it's your right to try. I can't say as I'm surprised they've caught you. But Aza…well, she was kind to me, and for free, as well."

Avon laughed, one of his starkest, nastiest ones. "Has the will to live been bred out of the Alpha class, now?" He reached over and pulled Tagg back down into his seat with a painful-sounding thump.

"We have to go save her!" Tagg protested.

"No," Avon sighed, feeling exhaustion seducing him back into sleep. "We have to plan to save her. It is completely different"

* * *

Sleer kept her breathing calm and even. Rai sat close. She could feel the heat from his skin through his tailored uniform. The vid screen before them showed a sharp picture of the holding cell occupied by Aza, Casimir, and the other nameless, soon-to-be-listed-as-collateral-damage, Gamma class woman. The camera was hidden on the wall in one of the corners of the cell, giving a birds-eye view of the goings on. And for the last hour, it had been unutterably boring. Calming chatter, wound tending, inane questions. Sleer was ready to go in there with a blaster and just end the whole annoying situation, but the thought of gleaning some important glimpse of Avon's present whereabouts kept her silent, intent on the screen.

"So what are you here for?" Aza asked White, finally managing to have separated herself from the older woman's endless fussing. It was endearing, but like any guilty mother's behavior, overwhelming.

"Piracy," The dumpling of a lady chirped back, quite obviously proud of herself. "I have a small ship in dock, the _Pandemonium_."

"You're a pilot?"

"My dear, I am an unbelievable pilot. And a world class crochet and cross-stich wizard. I could do bonnets and matching seat covers for everyone in this building in no time flat."

"Well, that will certainly be useful on a prison planet," Casimir intoned. He was still seated on the floor, only now his back leaned against the bars, giving him a full view of both women, seated on the single metal bunk.

"It will be if the weather isn't as warm as one would desire," White shot back, defensive.

"It better be," Aza cut in. "Besides the great weather, I don't believe Cygnus Alpha has much else to recommend it."

Casimir snorted.

"And what about you?" White asked Aza. "What type of horrendous criminal are you?"

"Political agitator."

"Oooh. Posh. I thought all your lot was dead years ago."

"Almost. Not long now and we all will be."

White nodded, swiping a hand under her eyes, dashing away what might have been tears. "And what will happen now to the _Panda_? Sold off as scrap metal I would imagine. And no hope of reprieve for either of you?"

Casimir looked sharply at Aza, who caught his look, but gave him a firm shake of the head. "No. Apparently my life is nowhere near important enough to expect a rescue, so we can just forget about that."

White perked up suddenly, glancing between the two resistance members. She grabbed Aza's hand with excitement. "Darling. You didn't tell me there was a man involved!"

"What?" Aza took her hand away. "What makes you think that?"

"God. Youth really is wasted on the young. Your tone of voice, my dear, you think you can slip that past an old galactic Gypsy like myself? Spill."

"There's nothing." Aza said firmly.

"Unless he's still alive." Casimir reminded her. "If he and Tagg found somewhere safe to hide."

White's eyes widened. "Two men. Getting better by leaps and bounds."

Aza shook her head, letting her shoulders slump. The pain was making her fuzzy, unable to process what seemed like too much stimulation. Looking, breathing, talking all at once; it was almost insurmountable. And this was after only hours of interrogation. How had Avon survived five days, and then had the reserves of energy to take a man hostage? A vigorous man, fresh from a night of sleep, fed and warm and in control of all his faculties?

What kind of inhuman hate or sense of duty could drive a man that hard? A man capable of that, who could cling so sternly to life, certainly would not put that life in danger to help her. No matter how hard she might wish for him. And against her better judgement, she knew she did. She wanted desperately to know that Tagg was alright, that he was safe and whole and out of danger, but she ached for Chevron. Avon. Whichever happened to appear, in whatever balance. It was his hands she wanted to smooth away the pain, and his shoulder to act as a pillow for her weary head.

"I don't know where they are," she mumbled finally, leaning her head back against the wall behind her.

"It must be the Delta section." Casimir said, gnawing the side of his thumb, not looking at her. "There are fewer cameras there. It's the only place they could have gone undetected this long. We still have friends there, don't we?"

"What?" Aza's head throbbed. Her tongue felt thick and coated. She knew Casimir was asking something, but it was jumbled.

"I thought we still had people there… that little one, you and Tagg used to know."

"Little?" A picture was forming in Aza's mind. Yes. A small man, with wild black hair.

"Yes, the one who used to find us meeting places, what was his name?"

"Name…?" A tiny man disappearing ahead of her into a junk-crowded shop.

"He would help us, wouldn't he? Damnit, what was his name…?"

"…?" Bell. Barn. B-

"Enough for now." White said firmly. Casimir shot her a venomous look, but she carried on, heedless. "Let her sleep for a while. She can hardly keep her eyes open as it is."

Aza's eyes drifted closed, "Thank you, mother" Aza said sarcastically. But it did feel good to let go of the memories, stop trying to make sense of the situation. There was a broad warm shoulder to lean against, and if it wasn't Avon's it was still kind, and solid, and in only moments she was swallowed up in blackness.

* * *

Sleer pressed her lips together firmly. Her fingers, formerly playing absently with Rai's hair had squeezed into a death grip. She released him now, a long breath hissing out her nostrils.

"Take the Gamma to another cell. Have her disposed of."

Rai disentangled himself carefully, and hurried from the room.


	7. A Filthy Mixture of Shadows

Avon woke to find the kitchen dim and empty. Their planning with the Scurry's had lasted long into the early hours, and he had dropped onto the day bed after, asleep before he was able to pull the blanket over him. It felt early now. Too early to have slept long. The dark quiet of early morning lay heavily over the silent room. And then a chair scrapped, and a small figure lurched to one of the counters and back again, settling with a satisfied sigh.

"You again," Avon groaned, covering his face. "Your bedside vigil is becoming tiresome."

Madam Scurry laughed. It was a dry sound. "You're welcome."

He uncovered his face and swung his legs out of bed, peering at her through the dim yellow light that escaped a solitary light bar over the counter.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"To give you want you've been wanting since you woke up. Answers."

His eyebrows drew together severely. "I woke up very recently."

"I don't mean tonight."

"And how do you intend to tell me anything about that?"

"I _am_ a mystic."

Avon gave a derisive snort. "Peddle your lies and theatrics elsewhere."

The old woman gave him an indulgent smile, and reached a hand out towards him. "I was right. You are _The Fool_. Do you know the cards of the Tarot deck? Here, let me see your palm, instead."

Avon sent her a look that would have turned anyone else to stone, but she continued to hold her hand out, "Such disrespect for the elderly," she clucked. "Take this advice for free. It will be an old woman who saves your life, and if you don't repay her with fealty then the fates will require a forfeit of you."

"Perhaps they'll steal my sense of humour, or my deep-rooted belief in fair play," he drawled.

"Don't make the mistake of thinking you don't have anything you wouldn't like to lose," she warned.

"After six months of torture, trust me, I can assure you there's nothing left for them to take."

"And I can assure you that your torturers didn't look hard enough." Madam Scurry slapped her hand on the kitchen table-top so loud Avon jumped.

"Now come and sit down."

He stood and crossed to her with a half-snarl, sitting with both hands fisted on the table-top.

"Are you familiar with _The Fool's_ journey?" she asked him.

"Intimately." Avon answered.

She laughed again, as if it was something a child would say. "I'm not impressed by your bluster. I know too much about you to be put off by such games."

He opened his mouth to answer, but she held up her hand to stop him. He closed his lips so fast his teeth clicked together.

"You see, my fool, you think of yourself as Achlys. Misery and sadness made flesh. You assume a knowledge of pain is a knowledge older than Chaos, and therefore the only lasting truth. Is that why the only lesson you ever try to teach others is how to suffer?"

"Actually, I think most would attribute that to madness." Avon leaned back in his seat. The usually cold smile on his face had become arctic. "You certainly have a flair for the melodramatic."

"Just as you have a flair for cowardice."

He sat up straight again. "You know nothing," he said at last.

"I know you bear the responsibility for many lost lives. I know you are a flesh-eater, leaving behind only bones."

"Why should that be my responsibility? If people chose to behave in a way that gets them killed…"

"Because you are the spark that sets it all in motion," the mystic screeched.

Avon started back, as if to avoid the accusing finger she jabbed at his face.

" _The Fool_ is the cause behind all effects, the power behind all manifestations and the seeds of all ends sown into every beginning. He is one of the most valued cards, and one of the most dangerous. Often mistaken for the protagonist, he leads us along on his foolish journey, straight over the welcoming edge of the cliff. He can be known to confuse pain for pleasure. Some believe he cannot be captured."

She held out her hand sternly. Avon presented his palm with no excuses.

Madam Scurry peered at it for a length of time, face glowing faintly green in the sick yellow light of the kitchen.

A smile cracked her face, and she stroked her wizened fingers over his palm a few times,

as if smoothing out a story book page. "Yes, there you are, my lovely fool. I've been expecting you."

She winked up at Avon then, and his head cocked quizzically to the side, at a complete loss for what to do next.

"I didn't recognize you, you see," she carried on, "without the feathers in your hair and beard. My wild man. And look here in your palm. A white rose. Who was it you thought free from the baser desires?"

Avon felt the sudden urge to gag. Madam Scurry nodded, giving his wrist a gentle squeeze. "Anna," he said. He watched her fingers as they traced a twisted path over and over on the

sensitive skin of his hand.

"But she wasn't free, was she?"

"No."

"No. Far from it, I see. A lover of sensuality. Of self-indulgence. She took a large piece of you with her when she left."

"You mean when she died?"

"No. Before that. She tried to give it back when she died. But you wouldn't take it."

"No, I wouldn't."

"Fool again, my dear. And someone else recently tried to give you something. A river of fire to warm you, and a coin under your tongue. Something to help you along the way."

Avon shook his head, truly lost. Something to help him along the way? Something he could use to maintain his sanity, perhaps? He could think of nothing at all.

"Look here." Madam Scurry pointed something out to him, and the two heads leaned together now, voices dropping into whispers in the quiet room.

"The pelicans," she whispered.

"More than one?"

"Seven all together. The mother feeding the whole brood from her own blood. They are a thankless family to have, my dear, but their love is strong, and lasts until death. They are all dead, aren't they?"

"Yes."

Madam Scurry made another noise. "Good."

Avon's hand closed convulsively around hers, squeezing tight. "How can you say that?"

"Because they would have eaten you alive. A mother only has so much blood to give."

She held him tight, stroking a hand through his prickly short hair. "I see you in the madhouse, my wild fool. Chanting words without meaning, old spells given as gifts to bring you back to life. A poetic decent into hell. And now in the torturer's cell, wrapped in the cold, wet sheets of the dead, made to love the act of self destruction, like self-pleasure, both empty. I see emptiness every time I look at you. You had something once, a well of words and passion, but the act of keeping them hidden made you deranged.

"You would have wasted your whole life for an unrequited love. You would have jumped from a tower purely for the ecstasy of the broken leg, and made a gift of the pain to _Anna_. Then you could think: _all this I suffered for Anna,_ as if she deserved it. Meanwhile someone who deserves more than simple pain will get nothing, after she gifted you a world of words to escape with. Listen to what I say to you. Do you think you're the only man with blood in his eyes?

Avon was shaking terribly. "I don't feel well."

"Then sleep, my dear. You are strangely lit tonight. You look maudlin. Sleep now, and maybe when you wake, you'll know better who you are, and what you owe."

Avon stood sharply from the table, so fast he felt a wave of dizziness overwhelm him. He didn't fall though, only grasped the back of the chair in a white-knuckled grip.

Madam Scurry said nothing else, merely gestured him back to bed, and lacking any other course of action, Avon went, tucking himself in under the quilt as if by her command. He was asleep within minutes.

* * *

It was almost exactly twenty-four hours later that the grate in the crematorium floor slipped aside with a sharp rasp of metal on concrete. A head topped with raven dark hair drifted up, looked around, and then Avon lifted himself out.

Tagg followed, handing up the two blasters he had brought with him, as well as the small bag packed with explosives. Avon set them all carefully on the cold floor and then offered Tagg his hand, pulling his companion the rest of the way out of the drainage tunnel.

Tagg wiped a sleeve across his face, eyes straining to adjust in the darkness. Avon flicked on a small flashlight, holding the beam steady on Tagg until the other man had dug his own out of his pocket and switched it on.

They were both smeared in black soot, their shadows thrown out grotesquely over the metal walls. Avon checked the chronometer at his wrist. It was almost three in the morning.

Tagg retrieved his bag and rooted around inside, coming up with a small box, wrapped with tape to a block of pale yellowish putty. He crossed to the door. Avon lit his way, watching without comment.

Bern had used his contacts to procure them the blasters, as well as the other materials Avon had listed. Or at least, he had been able to recommend explosives, Tagg was the one who had supplied all the details. The younger Scurry had been more than happy to supply anything they needed, since he had made it clear from the very beginning that he would not under any circumstances be coming with them.

Madam Scurry had given them a quick send off only a short while ago, patting Tagg on the hand and then giving Avon a dry feather-light kiss on the cheek. She had also slipped something into his pocket, shaking a finger at him. He had not looked at it until they were several blocks away from the shop. It was a Tarot card. _The Fool_ , worn and creased at the edges. He had slipped it back into his pocket without comment.

"You might want to turn away," Tagg hissed, running a thin wire away from the block to the other side of the room. "Just in case."

Avon huddled against the back wall with Tagg, both turned towards the wall, ears covered, shoulders hiked up. Tagg hit a switch and a tremor ran through the floor, followed by a suppressed but still resonant boom. No shrapnel flew, no metal or plass, but white stinging smoke filled the room, and the door jarred open, allowing a sliver of white outside light into the room.

The men straightened up, Tagg crossing first back to the door to check that the small explosive was spent and safe. When he was sure it was, he gestured Avon to join him, and the two of them stepped out into the anti-room.

Just as it had been on their previous entrance into the building, the room was empty. Avon tucked the blaster into the back of his pants and crossed to the next door, leading out into the hall. He opened it slowly, setting his eye into the crack. The hallway beyond was empty. At the far end several people in doctor's and nurse's uniforms passed back and forth, but none spared a look down the hallway. Bern had warned them that the night before a departure to Cygnus Alpha, the facility remained open, a small staff of doctors kept on-site to assist the security teams with the unrulier prisoners.

Avon watched Tagg zip up his bag and join him, and they walked together out into the hall. Avon walked with purpose. He selected a door a few feet down the hall and pointed out the key card system to Tagg, who fished a small probe out of the bag, handing it to Avon, who applied it to the card lock.

Tagg crossed to Avon's side, blocking him from view by anyone who happened to glance down the hall. Avon had the door open in seconds. Years of watching Villa work, as well as his own new-found understanding of electronic systems rendered the simple card reader almost useless.

They walked inside and pulled the door closed behind them.

"Walk straight to the other wall. Don't hurry," He instructed Tagg. It was possible that there were no active security cameras in the morgues, but he doubted it. Better safe than sorry.

The scrubs were hanging as he remembered them, and he boldly shed his clothing, changing into them as if it was something he did everyday. Tagg followed his example. They hung their clothing in place of the scrubs and exited again, turning right out of the door towards the rest of the building. A data pad stood in a wall folder towards the end of the hall. Avon grabbed it as they walked past, concentrating on it as they continued towards the section Aza had indicated housed the holding cells.

* * *

Casimir had his arm around Aza's shoulder when she came back to consciousness, stroking blunt fingers up and down over the crest of her shoulder.

"Back with us," he said, turning large sorrowful eyes on her.

Aza tried to tell him that she couldn't feel her feet, but her throat was a desert, the top of her mouth so gummy she felt she was choking. "Water?" she asked.

Casimir shook his head. "In a minute. We were talking before, Aza, you were telling me something, do you remember what it was?"

Her head throbbed. Something was missing. Someone? Where was White? Where were the kind hands and soft eyes?

"Where's she?" Aza tried again. She couldn't even cough she was so dry. Her throat just emitted a strangled gaging sound.

"She who? There's no one but us. There was a man here, earlier. A small man, a Delta. He had a message for you, but I don't remember what he said his name was."

Aza turned her head to look at Casimir. He smiled a slow comforting smile, draping his arm around her stiff shoulder, drawing her close into his warmth. Her stomach clenched and released a few times, as if it couldn't make up it's mind about vomiting again or not. There was nothing left in it anyway.

Two doctors entered the holding area, and after checking a few cells stopped outside theirs. One of them read something off a data pad, while the other smeared something wet into the lock on the door.

Aza's vision slid sideways, then spun.

"Aza," Casimir's voice was low in her ear. "Please. I think Tagg is in great danger. We have to get to him and warn him. What was your friend's name? The one in the Delta section. Didn't he live with his mother?"

"Mother? She's not here," Aza told him.

Something seemed to crackle and snap and the cell door swung open. Casimir frowned. No one was supposed to interrupt them until tomorrow morning. He looked up as the two doctors came in, one after the other, and the first one ran for Aza, taking her by the chin and lifting her face towards him. Casimir heard the strangled off curses, and recognized the voice.

"Tagg?" he hissed.

The doctor's eyes flicked over to Casimir, and the vivid green stare confirmed his suspicions.

"Casimir? What the hell are you doing here?"

"The same as Aza. How did you get here?"

"Never mind that now, can she walk? Aza?" Tagg leaned closer to his sister, shaking her by the shoulders. "Aza, can you understand me?" Aza wobbled and fell back against the wall.

Tagg drew back, looking to Avon for help. Avon shook his head. "She's too far gone. There's no way we'll be able to move her without attracting attention."

Tagg lifted his blaster, gesturing Avon forward menacingly. "You'd better find a way, or you're staying here with her.

Avon huffed and crossed to the seated figure, taking her chin in a large hand and drawing her face towards him to inspect the damage.

"Can you see?" he finally asked gruffly.

"No," her body trembled. "I think I have blood in my eyes."

Avon's face drained of colour. He searched her face for a moment longer, as if reading a map of his future. She kept his gaze, seemingly determined to wait him out. Finally, he crouched in front of her, pointing Tagg to the bucket of water still sitting in the corner.

"Bring it," he said.

Once in his grasp, he raised the ladle to her lips. The tepid liquid poured down her chin into her lap.

"What's wrong with her? She's breathing, she's sitting up!" Tagg's voice was high pitched with panic.

Avon said nothing. He knew from experience that a warm man never understands a cold one. A healthy man has only impatience for an injured one. He clasped one of Aza's hands in his own strong fingers and dipped his other hand into the bucket, bringing up a mouthful of water in his cupped palm. He let his palm brush against Aza's still lips, wetting them. A swollen tongue peeked out, tasting the water. Her eyes flickered. She gazed dully at Avon.

He dipped his palm in again and brought it back to her. A moment later he felt her tongue against his fingers, searching out the moisture. He repeated this a few more times until he felt he could try the ladle again. This time she took the water into her mouth. A few more seconds and she was drinking in small quick sips.

Aza's eyes fought for focus, finally giving the man in front of her a face.

Avon. Here in front of her. She felt the spark of triumph. His dark eyes followed her closely, an inscrutable expression on his face. She was amazed how different he looked. Almost unrecognizable to her.

She lifted a tentative hand to him, and he did not pull away. She ran it through his short hair, finger tracing carefully over the new stitches running over his forehead.

"Much shorter than I had in mind," was all she could say.

His lifted his own damp hand and took hold of her face again, his palm so large against the side of her cheek that his thumb could hook all the way around her chin. His fingertips touched lightly.

"Who did this to you?" His voice had a deeper note that was new. It resonated in a strange way. The look on his face when he asked froze her blood and warmed her heart at the same time.

She raised her chin a little. "Sleer. She was very interested in you."

He flinched. "And you told them…?"

"Everything, I assume. It was funny, after the cutting, they used truth drugs. I really don't see they had any need to hurt me at all, since the drugs seemed to work so well."

"Servalan is an old-fashion girl in so many ways." He gave her a half-hearted curl of his lip.

"Who?"

Avon dropped a hand to her shoulder to steady her, and then stood and turned to Tagg. "We need to go. She won't be able to walk. See if you can find us a gurney in the hall."

"I didn't see one on the way in." Tagg was shuffling his feet. Torn between knowing how urgent the need to escape, but fearful of hurrying his obviously stricken sister. Avon had no such qualms.

He bent down and scooped Aza into his arms, letting her arms settle around his neck. Her face pressed into the front of his shirt, leaving a bloody smear. She felt horribly light to him, and he clutched her tightly, trying to minimalize the jostling of his uneven gait as he left the cell. Tagg and Casimir followed.

"Wait." Aza mumbled against him. "Wait. Wait. Wait."

"What is it?" Avon growled.

"We can't leave without Mother."

Avon shot a quizzical look at Tagg, but he shook his head, eyebrows up at his hair line.

"We'll have to talk about it later." Avon said, hurrying on.

He even smelled differently, Aza realized. but his shoulder was firm and warm, and she could feel his heart beat against her side. Wait. They were leaving something important behind.

"No." Aza lashed out with her fists, catching him several times in the face. Avon bore it stoically. Finally, he turned angry eyes on Casimir.

"Do you know what she's talking about?"

Casimir nodded hesitantly. "There was an older woman in here with us earlier. I think that's who she means."

"We haven't got time to take the whole staff with us," Avon snapped back.

"She's a pilot." Aza said.

Tagg grabbed Avon by the shoulder, stopping him.

"What did you say, Aza? She's a pilot? Does she have a ship?"

"She has a _Panda_ in the space dock." Aza's head fell back against Avon's shoulder, burying her face in his neck. Avon rolled his eyes. "No."

"Excuse me," Tagg hissed, "But yes. It's a way off planet. Free."

" _If_ she'll take us." Casimir cautioned. "Where is she Aza? Are there any more cells?"

Aza's head remained down. Avon gave his shoulder a roll, trying to wake her up.

"Aza?" Tagg tried again. Her head popped up momentarily. "For extermination. Farther down the hall."

Avon gave Tagg a warning look, but the younger man was already preparing to go.

"Stop!" Avon snapped. Tagg turned to look at him quizzically. Avon hefted Aza into her brother's arms, pointing back the way they came. "Give me five minutes. If I'm not there, leave without me."

Tagg didn't pause to argue, but took off up the hall towards the exit, Casimir close behind him.

Avon watched them go, and then turned in the direction of the woman with the ship.

* * *

Sleer watched the screen greedily, eyes never leaning the slim form she knew must be her Avon. The picture was too grainy to make out features at this distance, but she knew. Rai sat at the edge of his seat, nearly gagging with pent-up energy.

"Shall we go now?" he panted.

"When things are going so splendidly? Is the tracking device we placed with Casimir working?"

"Yes, of course, but we don't need it now. He came himself. We can simply go down and get Avon."

"True, but what if we were also interested in getting ORAC back as well?"

"ORAC?"

"Once off this desolate rock, where do you think is the first place Avon will go?"

"He wouldn't be foolish enough to head back to Gauda Prime?"

"You think he'll be able to resist? Knowing ORAC is still there? And that Blake's body was never recovered?"

Rai looked confused. "But that's not true."

Sleer raised her eyes to the heavens. "Another reminder how thankful I am that you're not a part of our propaganda machine. Avon will believe what Casimir tells him. And Casimir belongs to us."

It all seemed a bit complicated to Rai, but then, none of the responsibility ultimately fell to him, so he bit his tongue and watched the figures on screen.

* * *

Avon came to the last cell in a long row. It also happened to be the only occupied one. The inmate was a grey-haired pudding of a woman with red veins visible within her plump pink cheeks. She glared at him like he had just crawled out from under some federation rock.

"You're the pilot?" he said dryly, letting his eyes wander over her for a second, as if there might be another, better model somewhere else.

"Get stuck, Federation pig," she spat at him through the bars.

Avon roared with laughter. The older woman winced at the sound.

"That settles it. You must be mother," he said between fading chuckles.

White shot to her feet and crossed to the bars. "You're with Aza?"

"For now."

"For now? Well, then, if you are with her, you don't deserve to be. Let me out of here, young man, I'm getting tired of the hospitality here."

"I have conditions."

White's eyes narrowed. "And what might those be?"

"You have a ship?"

"The _Panda_."

"If and when we escape, it belongs to me."

White recoiled slightly from the bars. He was staring at her now, without a hint of laughter anywhere about him. In fact, his eyelids had dropped into low hoods over a pair of vulture-black eyes, his mouth a hard sharp line under the curved shadow of his nose.

"That's a lot to ask."

"For your life? I thought you might consider yourself worth significantly more."

"Just where was it that Aza met you?"

A small smile, and his gaze shifted somewhere over her shoulder. "She hasn't actually met me. Not properly anyway. Is it a deal? Or shall I leave without you?"

"No one can fly the _Panda_ but me."

"I have never met a pilot who doesn't believe the same of their own ship. And they've been wrong every single time." He gave her another scornful look up and down, and then shrugged his shoulders. "Fine. Stay and die." He turned on his heel and left. White held out until he was a few feet away, but the echo of his boots on the floor beat against her brain. Panic won out in the end.

"Alright. Get me out and she's yours. Once we're safely out of here."

Avon stopped and turned back, and the two looked each other up and down with interest. A smile spread over his face as he walked slowly back, as gleeful as he was predatory.

"You double cross me - I'll shoot you out an airlock."

"Fair enough. You fail to get us out, and I'll kill you. With my bare hands if I have to."

Avon stood at the bars. He lifted the probe for her to see, and then deftly applied it to the lock. The door swung open a matter of seconds later, and he gestured for her to precede him down the hall.

"After you, mother."

* * *

Tagg got himself, Aza, and Casimir back through the twisted halls and into the room where their clothing hung without incident. Not a single person seemed to see or challenge them. Tagg thanked all the gods above as he entered the morgue and kicked the door shut behind them.

"Okay," he said, placing Aza gently down on the steel table in the center of the room. "Five minutes, starting now."

He looked around, at a loss for a moment, and then crossed to the hook bearing his clothes and began to change back from the scrubs. Casimir crossed to Aza, putting a supportive arm around her shoulder.

"Where did they find you?" Tagg tossed over his shoulder, not really focused on Casimir.

"In the water treatment room with the rest of them."

Tagg slowed, as he did up a few final buttons and turned back to the rebel leader with his boots in his hand. "You were there? I thought…"

Casimir bit into the side of his cheek, mentally cursing himself for not asking for more details about the final ambush. He had his back to Tagg, as he had busied himself looking at the damage to Aza's face, but he made himself turn to look at him, nodding his head. "It certainly wasn't pretty."

"No." Tagg seemed lost in thought for a moment, but then his eyes snapped back to Casimir's, deadly serious. "I don't care how long it takes me, but I am going to kill Levin Bril."

"Bril is already dead. Aza told me. Apparently they got him at his computer terminal. Probably how they knew where you were."

"I don't buy it. There were _squadrons_ of troops there. Presidential troops. Someone must have tipped them off."

"Well it couldn't have been one of our people. Tagg. You didn't see that room."

"No, but I…"

"Exactly. I did. I knew all those people like family, and now they are all dead. All except…"

Tagg hung in the silence, waiting. "Except?"

"Well, like I told Aza, I thought maybe I saw Waitstill get to the door. And Lana never got to the room at all."

Tagg let his head hang, his boots fell from his hand to the floor.

The sound of the blaster shot took him completely by surprise. His head jerked up in time to see Casimir rock sideways, and then fall to the floor, dead, a look of surprise mirroring Tagg's owe frozen to his dogged face.

Beyond Aza's shoulder, Avon stood in the doorway, blaster still out, an older woman with him, half-hiding behind his taller body. Time seemed to slow for Tagg, the air left his lungs, his legs weakened, and he wanted desperately to get off whatever carnival ride he had mistakenly gotten on. And then the sound was back, the moments speeding up, and then it was all too fast. Too fast and too loud all over again.

"What in the hell have you done?" He bawled at Avon.

The silent analyst had entered the room now, dragging the woman behind him by the wrist.

"I've killed your traitor," he said placidly, shedding his scrubs and replacing them with his black clothing from the hook against the wall.

"You can't be sure of that!" Tagg pleaded.

"I am indeed sure he's dead."

"I meant that he was the traitor!"

Avon rolled his eyes. "Please. We both heard Lana die. And you told me you heard Waitstill crying, not making a heroic run for freedom. Casimir wasn't there."

"So you shot him? Even if what you say is true, you didn't need to shoot him. We might have talked!"

Avon gathered the scrubs he had dropped in a pile on the floor and carried them over to the steel table where Aza still sat, following the conversation with a silent brooding expression. Avon knew most of her reactions now where the symptoms of shock, but he had no time to make anything better. His goal now was _safer_ , and it was all he could do. "I see, well, if that's the kind of revolution we're having, I wish someone would have told me. I would have ordered extra hot cocoa and tea cakes."

Avon tested his fingers against Aza's cheek. It had mostly scabbed over now, though there was still blood on his fingertips when he took them away.

Tagg grabbed his shoulder from behind and spun him around.

"You will promise me not to do that again," the younger man growled.

Avon smiled at him. "No. But I will promise you blood." He swept his wet fingers across Tag's cheeks, leaving a long red smear. "There's your first instalment. I can promise you more later. Enough to swim in." Avon shoved him away hard and turned back to Aza. "With any luck you'll drown," he tossed back over his shoulder. "Now someone help me get these clothes off her."

And with that he started to strip what remained of Aza's clothing off, running large square-tipped fingers slide quickly over all the exposed flesh.

Tagg nearly choked with rage. His eyes drifted down to the blaster tucked into the side of Avon's pants. And then a cool dry hand settled starling-light on his shoulder, and he was considering a set of china-blue eyes.

"Why don't you let mother take care of this, now. Doesn't that sound like a good idea?"

White didn't wait for an answer. She crossed to the other side of the steel table, so that she could look Avon in the face as he worked.

"Mr. Avon?"

"Just Avon."

"I'm going to suggest that there might be a slightly more appropriate time for this activity, and it is far away from here, and once we've established the young lady is willing."

Avon blinked at her for a moment. Understanding hit a moment later, and White was treated to one of his more confusing smiles. "After all this, I'm not sure the lady will ever be willing again, but I'm afraid that's none of our business. I could use some help getting her undressed. We need to leave behind everything they might be able to hide a tracker in. Perhaps you could check her skin for any fresh incision marks? Bumps? Anything suspicious. Even in her injuries. I know Servalan, and she is a disgusting tribute to cleverness. We can check her more thoroughly when we get somewhere with a scanner."

White blinked for a moment in surprise, but then quickly took over the task, being careful as she removed the rest of Aza's ragged clothing not to separate it too swiftly from where it was stuck to her injuries with dried blood.

Avon grabbed Casimir's shoulder's next, nodding for Tagg to get his feet.

Tagg complied with a glare.

"No one challenged you in the halls did they?" Avon asked.

Tagg shook his head.

"No alarms," Avon continued, hauling Casimir over to the bank of metal lockers on the walls. He popped one open, but it was full. He moved on to the next, finding it empty. "No trouble finding the people we were looking for." Avon heaved Casimir's body into the locker, and Tagg shoved it the rest of the way in. "One of the easiest escapes I've participated in so far." Avon slammed the door of the locker. "Servalan is here. She's watching. It's the only answer that makes any sense."

Avon crossed back to the table when White was supporting Aza, now dressed in clean scrubs, and lifted her easily into his arms again. He then headed towards the door, not even tossing a look behind him to make sure the others were following. "We're leaving."

* * *

Sleer watched the flashing light on her palm-monitor.

"Still not moving," she hummed, tension starting to form around her mouth and eyes. "Are we sure we don't have any other cameras in that area of the building?"

Rai shook his head. "According to the schematics, it's just the morgue and incinerator down there. There are no exits, no pathways into other parts of the building." He looked up hopefully, but the President did not seem to bee cheered by the news. Her eyes drilled into the monitor.

"They've only been still for a few minutes."

"Seven." Sleer snapped back. "Something's wrong. Call the troops. No survivors. Avon knows."

"With all respect Madam President, there's no way you can…"

Her eyes drifted up to his, and he nearly fell over himself activating the comm.

* * *

The troops swept the incinerator a second time. Still nothing. Finally, the Section Leader pulled off his mask and shook sweat off his forehead. He activated his wrist transmitter.

"All clear, Madam President."

"What do you mean, all clear?"

"We found the body in the morgue, as you suggested, but there's no sign of the rest of them."

The rest of the troop stood stock still, and they could all hear a sharp indrawn breath. A few of the men winced in reply.

"Send someone to check all the lockers." He voice was cutting.

"Already done, Madam President. All empty."

"What about the room you're standing in?"

"Nothing here, Madam President."

"That is inaccurate. There must be something there for you to be standing in. Describe it to me."

The Section Leader took a long silent breath, and began, trying to keep his voice level. "Four walls, smooth, metal, about eight feet tall. A single light inset into the ceiling with a mesh cage over it. Small openings along the bottom of the wall that I assume are for the gas to enter. There is a pilot light close to the door, but it is extinguished at this time."

"Continue."

"The floor slopes in on all sides towards the center of the room, where there is a metal grate leading to what I assume is a drain."

"How large is the grate."

"About two foot squared, I'd say."

"About shoulder width, then?"

"It would be pretty tight for a man, Madam President."

"Oh, why thank you for that helpful opinion, Section Leader, I'll make sure to note it for later. Is the grate removable?"

The Section leader gestured to one of his men, who knelt beside it and lifted the grate easily, looking back at his commanding officer, who's blood pressure seemed to drop significantly. "Yes, it is Madam President."

"And if there is a grate, I assume there is something there that generates water?"

Already ahead now, several of the men stepped back out into the anti-room, and returned hauling a high-powered hose.

"Yes Madam President, there certainly is."

"Proceed Section Leader."

* * *

Avon had gone first, Aza behind him, followed by White, and then Tagg. They all crawled on their stomachs, using forearms to drag themselves forward. Avon huffed and panted, sweat sliding down his forehead into his eyes. Behind him, he could hear Aza struggling, her voice audible in her breath, little sounds of pain and fatigue.

"Avon?" Tagg called from somewhere behind him in the dark.

"What?" he growled back. He was in no mood to chat.

"How much farther?"

"I'm not sure. I'd say another five minutes."

"That might be too far."

"What are you talking about?" Avon snapped.

"I'm crawling through water. And I can hear more behind me."

"What do you mean"

"I mean I can hear rushing water."

Avon stopped, and the rest followed suit behind them. The tunnel sunk into silence, save for Aza's laboured breathing, as she was the only one unable to hold it. There was a rumbling coming from behind them, increasing in volume.

Avon swore. "Right. Hurry." He set himself back to crawling.

Tagg was the first to feel it, water, sloshing under his knees, wetting his boots. Next thing he knew, his whole belly was soaked, chilly with water. It quickly reached his armpits, creeping up his sides. His thighs cooled, then the insides of them, freezing his groin, and then the bulk of the water hit, swirling around him and stealing his breath away.

It surged over all four of them then, filling their mouths, covering them and almost filling the tunnel.

"There's air at the top" Tagg yelled, spluttering out water.

Necks craned up, trying to keep mouths out of the brackish water, mixed with the already greasy ash, turning the water dark, with a layer of clinging soot on top.

Avon lifted his head, his nose jammed against the roof of the tunnel, crawling forward helplessly, fingers searching for the end of the tunnel, the was a final turn up ahead, and then the grate. He could hear Aza coughing and gaging behind him, unable to lift her head high enough. She was falling away behind him.

"Push her." Was all he could get out, hoping that somewhere behind him Mother could hear him. A hand lashed out, and fixed around his ankle, and he pulled harder, unsure if Aza could get any air at all. He took a final breath, filling his lungs as full as he could, and then the air bubble at the top of the tunnel was gone, and he struck out with his arms, unable to kick, dragging himself and Aza as far as he could. Tagg fell left his consciousness. The man would have to take care of himself. His lungs screamed, and he knew it was only a matter of seconds until his traitorous body overrode his brain and forced him to take in a breath, even if it consisted entirely of water.

His fingers ground into something hard, and then his head hit. It was the twist in the tunnel, he pulled himself hard right, and clawed until he thought Aza was around with him. His head came up to the top of the tunnel. There was a bare inch of space there, and he dragged in as much air as he could, almost vomiting. A few more powerful strokes with his arms and the inch on top became two, then three.

This first wave of water must be emptying out of the grate at the end of this section of tunnel.

He tuned himself onto his back, reached down, and found the small hand still clamped to his ankle. He yanked it towards him, then felt around till he had a shoulder. Awkwardly, with almost no room to maneuver, he found a handful of Aza's hair, and managed to pull her head upwards, lifting her nose and mouth out of the water.

She sputtered momentarily, as if she couldn't process the action needed, then her throat cleared with a racking cough, and she drew in shuttering slurping breaths, dragging in water as well as air. Avon continued to pull her along, heedless of the fact that it was by the hair, until the water was low enough that he could release her, trusting her to be able to keep her own head above water. It was down to the halfway mark.

He reached the grate and shoved it aside, scrambled out onto the concrete ground, pulling himself up out of the tunnel groove onto the pavement. Aza spilled out behind him, and he grabbed her by the back of the collar, lifting her out without gentleness. She came to settle laying half across him.

Next came White, who reared up on her knees and then rolled out of the groove.

Avon crawled back towards the grate, leaving Aza behind. Tagg's hand appeared at the opening, but did not move. He had been carried along by the current. Avon dragged him out, flipping him onto his back. His chest was still, eyes open, face and clothes streaked with black. Avon made a fist and drove it into the man's upper chest. Tagg choked and vomited. Avon grabbed his shoulder and turned him over, letting the liquid drain from his mouth and throat. After a moment, and a few painful breaths, Tagg raised himself to his hands and knees, letting his head hang. "Thanks," he coughed. "That's one I owe you."

"I'll remind you." Avon climbed painfully to his feet, crossing to Aza and helping her up with him.

"What the hell happened?" Tagg spat, trying to wipe the worst of the muck off his face.

"Servalan." Avon curled his arm protectively around Aza's waist, letting her rest her head on his shoulder. "She knows. We need to leave now. She'll already have tracked where the drainage pipe ends."

"We can't just walk to the space docks like this," Tagg gestured to the state of their clothing. "We'll be picked up in seconds."

White stood from where she had been leaning with her hands against her knees, head lolling.

"I can help. Is there a shuttle that goes to the docks?"

Tagg nodded. "A couple."

"Get us to the nearest one. I'll show you an old trick I know."

Tagg pointed the way, and Avon let him lead, following after with Aza and White.


	8. Committed Unto Fortune

White led them across the shuttle platform and onto the tracks. At this hour of the morning it was deserted. Avon jumped from the edge of the platform first, and Tagg lowered Aza into his arms. Avon had given up on letting Aza try to move under her own power. He kept her clenched tightly against his chest. It was making his back muscles ache.

White scurried forward into the mouth of the underground tunnel, disappearing into the dark ahead of them. By the time Tagg and Avon caught up with her, she was at a small service door a few feet down the tunnel, working at the lock.

"What's this?" Tagg hissed

"A maintenance tunnel. They run beside the main tracks all the way through the underground system. If the Federation invests in building a thing, they invest in maintaining the thing."

White gestured at the lock, giving Avon a withering glare, and Avon set Aza down again, using his probe to pop the lock. White hurried inside. The rumble of a shuttle started behind them, from further down the tunnel. Avon, back to carrying Aza, and Tagg hurried through the doorway, Avon kicking the door shut behind him, just in time to muffle the loud squeal of the train rushing by, slowing for the platform.

"This won't fool them for long," White whispered at them, "But it's better than getting on the shuttle. And aboveground is right out. Anyone know which direction to the docks?"

"Uh…" Tagg though for a second, pulling his lower lip and glancing in either direction. "This way." He pointed, and they all set out.

"You sure have a knack for knowing where you're at." White called up to him. Tagg smiled over his shoulder at her. "Part of our defence training. If there was ever an uprising, the government wants us to know how to cripple the city with the smallest expenditure. A bomb or two in the right places shuts the whole place down. That was enough of a pretext for me to look around without anyone getting too suspicious. It's kind of a hobby of mine."

"So, you can always find North?" White asked. Tagg pointed over his shoulder through the wall, then chuckled at her impressed look. "For what it's worth."

The tunnel was low ceilinged and narrow, with insulated pipes and tubes running along the walls and ceiling. An emergency light every few hundred feet kept it dim, but navigable. They reached a 'T' connection, and Tagg turned confidently left, then jogged right again a few minutes later.

The rest followed, Avon's limp and Aza's harsh breathing the only sounds in the tight space.

After what felt like a lifetime, Tagg stopped at another maintenance door, tapping on it gently. "This should be about where the stop for the docks is." The rest of them stood still, almost unwilling to leave the sudden quiet. White finally stepped forward and pulled the door open a crack, placing one eye to the crack. The tunnel was dark, a distant light glinting off the line of track.

They made their way out, and to the left the lights of a platform beckoned them. Moving slowly White crept to the edge of the tunnel, peering around the corner onto the platform. The rest watched her heave a giant sigh as she caught sight of the sign for the space docks.

They climbed out one by one, helping each other until they were all standing on the platform. Tagg led the way.

The docks were a large hollow-sounding hangar, full of ships of all sizes, perched on various pads. Some refueling. There were several maintenance workers around, but for the most part the place looked deserted. The group stopped short of the entrance, keeping out of sight in one of the various storage bays, behind a stack of boxes. A moment later a platoon of troopers marched by. Tagg scrubbed a tired hand over his face. He looked to White. "Where's your ship?"

"Bay seventy-five," she answered.

Tagg raised his eyebrows at her.

"Other end of the dock."

Avon set Aza down, leaning her against the stack of boxes. He snapped his fingers at Tagg. "Blaster." Tagg hesitated a moment, and then handed his blaster over.

"What are you going to do?"

"Picnic." Avon said, giving Tagg an incredulous look as he slipped out from behind the boxes, creeping away towards the main hanger.

"Just don't forget to come back for us" Tagg called after him. White `squatted down next to Aza, taking the woman's face in her hands. "She's still severely dehydrated."

Tagg motioned for them both to be quiet as another platoon of troopers marched by.

Avon limped into the main bay. A small flitter sat, partially disassembled, parts strewn everywhere. The pilot was no-where to be seen. He hurried over, concealing himself behind a tall cart stacked with diagnostic equipment, and settled in to watch the movement of troops around the hangars. Eventually, he knew they would start searching the ships by ones and twos. He settled in to wait patiently.

Tagg sighed. It seemed they had been sitting there forever, listening with sinking hearts as more and more military booted feet tromped by. There was a slight rustle, and then Avon appeared again, two black uniforms draped over his arm. He passed one to Tagg, starting to strip and pull the other on himself.

"Where did you get these?" Tagg hissed.

"Goodwill donation." Avon answered, not even looking up. White took his face by the chin and forced him to look at her. After a moment she wiped a smudge of blood off his brow, but said nothing. Once wearing their disguises, Avon handed Tagg a large federation issue blaster, and let White walk on her own. He and Tagg prepared to drag Aza between them.

"Won't this hurt her?" Tagg said.

Avon rolled his eyes. "We'll apologize later." He turned to White. "Head straight for your ship. Try to take the least populated route. We'll follow. Keep your hands up in front of you." She nodded and raised her hands. Taking a deep breath, she started out through the hangars, keeping her eyes forward, trying not to peer around at the dark shadows she kept catching move out of the corners of her eyes. Troops were searching the ships, guards in threes and fours quick timed up and down the hangar, overturning equipment and searching inside storage containers.

It felt like the longest walk she had ever taken, listening to the stomp of the boy's boots behind her, and the drag of Aza's legs across the floor.

Just when she thought she wasn't going to make it, the _Pandemonium_ came into sight. White heaved a sigh of relief. Someone grabbed her from behind, stopping her short. An angry voice growled in her ear.

"That's your ship?!"

White cocked her head, confused for a moment. "Yeah, so?" Avon's hands shook with anger. "It's a scrap heap. That thing will never get off the ground!"

"Excuse me!" White shot back, truly offended. "Alright, she needs a new coat of paint, and a few odds and sodds, but she's space-worthy." Tagg cleared his throat with embarrassment.

The _Panda_ was unassuming. She was small, and composed of many salvaged parts, and rusted and dented by debris. She leaked, a little, and sat slightly crooked on her legs. White loved her.

Avon nearly choked. "That thing is a deathtrap."

"I'll have you know the _Panda_ has avoided many a space pirate in her day."

Avon's pointed finger stabbed out at one of the line of Mark 10s sitting farther down the hangar, glinting lethally under the lights. "They'll be chasing us with those!"

White eyed the larger, sleeker ships. "Well. I mean, yeah, I can see why some might be intimidated."

"This rust bucket wouldn't even make a good decoy!" Tagg whined.

"Unless we blew it up." Avon mused, "maybe we could take out one of two of the other ships in the ensuing smallish bang."

"Hey, you?!" A voice snapped behind them. Avon whirled around to find another set of troopers standing behind them.

"What are you doing?" The voice was aggressively efficient.

"Caught these two coming out of that piece of shit there." Avon gestured over his shoulder at the _Panda_.

"Excuse me!" White shrilled again, "that piece of shit is my ship."

The troopers cocked their heads at them, eyes hidden behind black visors. "Where are the other two? We're looking for four."

"They must have split up. Or left these two behind." Avon gave Aza a shake, making her droop farther towards the ground. Tagg kept his mouth shut, sweat pouring from his face into his mask. He had no idea how Avon was even forming words at this point.

"Follow me." The trooper's muffled voice came again. The President is on her way. She'll want these two. The rest of us will keep searching."

Avon nodded curtly and started back towards the mouth of the hanger. The rest of the group struggled to keep up with him. He allowed the troopers marching ahead of them to gain a little distance on them.

"What are we doing?" White hissed to him.

"Can you fly your ship remotely?" he asked back.

"Maybe."

Avon shot her what she assumed was an angry look.

"I can, yes, but only if I have access to a computer terminal. I don't have a remote or anything. "

"What about the computer in a Mark10?"

"I suppose. I've never been in one."

"No time like the present."

Avon steered them sharply towards one of the ships with the gangway open. A group of troops marched out, and Avon dragged White inside, praying Tagg was following with Aza.

One of the group of soldiers stopped and turned, but Avon cut him off, pointing at the mouth of the hangar.

"The President is waiting!"

The man started, and the group hurried off. Avon walked confidently in, turned right, and hurried down the bright hall. He walked as if he knew where he was going, quickly getting lost in the myriad of halls and passages that made of the interior layout of the larger ship.

As soon as he was sure there were no sounds of booted feet following them, he dropped to his knees and pried open an access panel, gesturing them all inside.

He replaced the grate above them and started to crawl forward on his hands and knees.

"Crafty," White breathed.

"It'll fool them for about six minutes," Avon shot back. "There's got to be a terminal around somewhere close we can get to. We need to head for the hold."

They twisted their way through tunnels, crawling until their hands and knees felt bruised and bloody. Finally, Avon stuck his head up, moving another grate aside. There was a wall mounted terminal in front of him.

He gestured for Tagg and Aza to stay where they were, and hauled White out with him, crossing quickly over to the wall and applied his quick fingers to the keypad.

"You're never going to get pas their security." White hissed. "I say we go back for the _Panda_ while we still have a chance."

"I'm in," he deadpanned, moving over to give her access. White gave him a confused look.

"What exactly is it I'm doing?"

"Program the ship for quick start up, then take off. Make it look as if you're running for it as fast as you can."

White tried to frown him into some kind of common sense, but he continued to stare at her, obviously in no hurry to change the request. White tapped in her access codes, and began the maneuvers he requested.

"Now what?"

"You're finished?"

"It's set to go on my password."

"Then GO for god's sake!"

White jumped at the sharpness of his voice. She hurried to comply. After a moment there was a rumbling from outside.

"Back down," Avon hissed, shoving the older woman back to the tunnel rudely, causing her to almost fall through the hatch, and crawling in after her, he replaced the grate. A few seconds later feet rounded the corridor and tromped over them, heading in the direction of the bridge.

Avon maneuvered around the others in the tunnel and began crawling in that direction himself. Tagg shook Aza, trying to get her to come after them, but his sister gave no sign of life.

"Aza?"

She did not move. "Avon! Something's wrong with Aza. I think she's dying."

"Most likely," the older man said, continuing around the corner.

"But, we need to take her with us!"

"Why?" Avon's voice was fading as he crawled farther away. "We're not leaving the ship. Leave her there. If we're alive at the end of this, we'll come back for her. "

White threw Tagg an apologetic look, but followed Avon away. Tagg ground his teeth together, giving his sister one last shake. She still did not respond. He se her down gently and followed the others.

The bridge of the Mark 10s was smaller that what Avon was used to. The _Scorpio_ had been cramped, but his body remembered the Liberator, where he could stalk about to his heart's content. More than usually snarling at the top of his lungs. He peered out the small ventilation grate down at the standard nine-man set-up.

They had found a safe place to emerge from the floor tunnel, switching over to one of the overhead vent systems, where they continued to crawl as quietly as possible. Now they all watched together, as the controlled chaos of take-off commenced below them. There were only two actual humans bustling below them, the rest manning the station were mutoids, both men and women, their pale waxen skin a contrast to the regulation all-black uniform.

The ship shuddered as it lifted from the hangar, bouncing this way and that as it finally caught the steady feel of being out in the black of space.

As soon as the communication systems came on line the room was full of orders, snapping back and forth from one ship to another. The view screen showed them to be in the center of a small fleet, all hurrying after one of the worst-looking ships Avon had ever seen.

White's eyes widened as she recognized her ship, zipping away before them.

"What's happening?" she whispered.

Avon gave her a caustic look, and answered so quietly she could barley make it out. "They'll have her shot out of the sky any second."

"The _Panda_?!"

"Of course. You didn't really think we could get away in that clunker, did you?"

"Like hell I'm letting these bastards destroy my ship!"

Avon waived her into silence again. "Never mind that now. I've gotten us a better ship."

"Which?"

Avon looked around significantly.

"Not this one?!" she almost cried.

"Uh, Avon, I hate to rain on your insane parade here, but we aren't exactly in possession of this one." Tagg drawled.

"Yet," Avon corrected. He went back to watching. The mutoid crew worked quickly and efficiently, and the small fleet of Mark 10s gained at an alarming rate on the smaller vestal. Their ship was somewhere on the right flank, and seven other identical ships swarmed around them, slipping through space in tandem.

As soon as the smaller ship was within firing range, the orders echoed through the bridge. A familiar voice. Avon smiled grimly. It seemed that Servalan had decided to give the final command herself. Energy bolts shot out, converging on the small craft, and a second later, the spot once occupied by the _Pandemonium_ was empty, a few drifting scraps of metal all that was left of it.

White gave a half-muted sob.

Avon almost expected a cheer to go up on the bridge, but the mutoids continued to click away at keys efficiently.

"The ship is disintegrated" one of the females intoned, barley turning from her console.

 _And so I would have died_ , Avon thought _. Without even a cheer._

"Ships, return home." It was a disgruntled male voice now. Servalan had obviously relinquished personal command as soon as the fun was over.

"You heard her," the commander said, and then turned on heel and left the bridge. No doubt to write up the glorious engagement up in the ships log.

The second in command slid into the command chair, slouching back in a relaxed posture.

"Hardly worth all the fuss," he muttered, raking a hand through his thinning blond hair. "Take us back."

On the viewscreen, all the other ships we did the same, slowing, maneuvering around in the opposite direction.

Avon moved silently, sliding the vent grate off. He made sure Tagg had his blaster ready, and then slid down onto the hard metal floor, tensing painfully to keep his unbalanced weight from making him stumble. Tagg handed the blaster down. Tagg descended after. White handed the second blaster down and stayed where she was. At Avon's request, she would come down as soon as the surprise attack began. He had no illusions that the woman was incapable of stealth.

Avon crept forward, his palms on his blaster slick with sweat. He stopped just behind the command chair, muzzled of the blaster inches away from the second in command's temple.

"Tell them to prepare for hyperspace jump." His voice never wavered.

The Second looked up, startled, and there was a flurry as the mutoids swiveled in their chairs, half of them on their feet already. Tagg trained his gun on them, barking as he did. "Stop. Stop where you are."

"Stop them." Avon hissed at the Second, "or you die now."

"Wait," The Second sputtered, held his hand up, palm-first, and the mutoids subsided.

"You will repeat my commands to them." Avon hissed again. The frightened man nodded. "They are unable to do anything that would harm the Federation," he said, his voice thin and panicked.

"And who's the representative of the federation in this room?" Avon reminded him. "Tell them to sit down,"

The order was given. Avon nodded. "Now. Tell them to prepare fore a jump. Standard by 16."

"It's too fast. The Plaxton drive doesn't go that high."

"That's not what Dr. Plaxton assured me. Before I killed her." Avon glanced significantly at his blaster again.

"Do it," The Second commanded. "Prepare for a jump, standard by 16."

The mutoids complied, the same bored expressions on each of their ghoulish faces.

"Co-ordinates?" one of them asked. It was the same female who had announced the end of the _Pandemonium_. Avon gave her a snide look. "Never mind that. Straight a head will do for now."

She quirked a derisive eyebrow at him. "Chances of impact with another astral body are extremely high without a fixed point of termination."

Avon glowered at her. She stared back, unimpressed.

The com crackled beside the Second, and a man's voice broke in on them. "Right guard 3564, we're picking up a switch in co-ordinates that take you away from the base. Explain your reason for these new maneuvers."

The Second looked questioningly at Avon, who shook his head. " _Right guard 3564, you will answer this comm, immediately._ " Footsteps sounded in the hallway. The First in Command was on his way back to the bridge to see what was happening. Tagg raced to the doorway, standing to one side to allow the man to come charging in. He stopped short when he saw Avon with the blaster and turned on his heel. Tagg raised the second blaster in his face.

"Keep calm," Tagg warned him. "Were a very desperate bunch."

"New co-ordinates set, sir." The female mutoid called out, glancing back over her shoulder at the First in Command.

Tagg waved the blaster in his face. "Just say yes," he warned.

The comm blared again, and this time there was a significant amount of noise audible behind the angry voice, as if the room behind him were in uproar. "Right guard 3564, cease procedures immediately, or your actions will be taken as hostile and we will be forced to fire on you. We will not hesitate to…"

There was a sudden strangled yelp, and the views screen snapped on to reveal a face, almost wild with predatory glee staring at the figures on the bridge.

President Sleer.

"Avon." she breathed.

Avon spun when he heard the voice, and the two of them stared at each other for a split second - frozen.

"Servalan," he confirmed.

The Second in Command snapped his hand out, knocking Avon's gun to the side. Avon dove sideways, just as the Commander lunged at Tagg, who fired without though. The man crumpled, and Tagg stood frozen, hands suddenly shaking uncontrollably. A moment later the bridge was swarming in mutoids, all up from their chairs and moving to attack the stowaways.

Avon rolled onto his back, firing as he did. Bolts went wild, hitting the walls, skimming past one of the mutoids, throwing them off-balance. Another, a man, landed on top of Avon, and the blaster barked again, tearing a hole right through his middle. Tagg spun around at the noise, and began to fire, almost indiscriminately into the room.

White landed awkwardly on her feet, a mutoid in motion slammed right into her, taking them both to the ground.

"Engage the Plaxton Drive," Avon yelled at her, keeping doubled over behind the Captains chair to try to hide from Tagg's panicked firing.

"How?" White yelled back.

"I thought you were a pilot!" Avon snarled at her.

There was a sudden silence. Tagg had dropped the muzzle of his blaster, looking around. The room around him was a bloody mess. All the mutoids but two lay in crumpled chaos, limbs strewn across the floor. One of the males was engaged in holding the rest of his innards in, leaned up against a bulkhead wall, and a woman sat slumped against her console, dripping green blood around the base of her seat. Her eyes stayed fixed on Avon, large and glassy, but no amount of effort could bring motion to her limbs. The Second in Command had several holes in his chest, and his Commanding officer, wide-eyed and frightened, stood against the wall by the door, hands out before him as if this could halt the force of a blaster bolt.

Avon stood slowly, the two of them breathing in sink, gauging the other warily.

"Avon!" Sleer barked from behind them, and Avon whirled at the sound of her voice, painfully aware that she had been witness to the whole messy exchange.

Tagg lowered himself carefully into one of the navigator's seats, letting his blaster fall to the floor.

"What are you playing at, Avon?" she growled, oblivious to the fact that the room behind her had gone still. Avon took a deep breath, and looked a question over at White, who was scrolling through computer screens, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

"If you give up now, we shan't blow the ship to pieces. We can talk. Like we used to. You always enjoyed our conversations, didn't you, Avon?"

"For the most part they were unutterably boring," he said, eyes scanning the control panel White was working at.

And at that moment, memory, blessed memory, was there at last. He knew, definitely and with every fiber of his being, the correct sequence needed to jump the ship into maximum speed. He took a deep cleansing breath, looking at Sleer straight in the eye for the first time.

"And yet recently," she said, her voice dropping into that purring place she used on a good many unsuspecting members of the male species, "you've done very little but talk."

HE understood the innuendo all to well. Bluffing, he hopped, but probably not.

"You have everything then, Servalan? No secrets left between us?"

"Nothing, darling. Come home where you belong."

"And ORAC?"

"ORAC?"

"How are you getting on with ORAC?"

"A little rocky at first, but he's proved to be infinitely useful. Now stop this show, Kerr, these people must know that following you will only get them killed. The rebellion is thrice dead, darling, and you're hardly the heroic type. Let the Federation bring you back home."

Avon's eyes narrowed.

"Come now, darling, think of the power you would have if allied with the right side. The only side left, Kerr. All we need is a show of good faith. Power down the ship. It's the only answer, when you think of it."

Avon considered it. Considered it as one toys with a dream long-dead.

Avon raised his blaster, pointed it at the still swaying Commanding officer, and shot him cleanly between the eyes. Sleer flinched. Her red lips drew back in a half-grimace.

"Avon, this is your last chance, a moment more, and I swear I will not leave a single inch of space free for you to hide in. I will rip you bloody limb from limb and flay the flesh from your body and make sure you are awake for the whole excruciating process. You'll beg for…"

"You know, Servalan," he cut her off, walking calmly to the navigation panel and laying his finger over the communications controls. "You're starting to look dreadfully old. "

Sleer took a deep startled gasp if breath and opened her mouth to reply. Avon cut the communication. He hurried over to where White was still working franticly and began deftly pressing buttons. A moment later the ship stalled, pulling back as if gathering strength, and then slammed forward, throwing them all backwards, as space blurred behind and in front of them, leaving earth, Central Command, and the Federation behind.

Avon let his knees buckle and he fell thankfully into the nearest chair. A moment later, the Commander's body finally toppled wetly to the floor. White and Tagg glanced over at each other, neither daring to break the heavy silence.

Avon placed his blaster on the floor and folded his arms over his chest, staring out at the multi-coloured smear of stars rushing past the viewscreen.

"Well," he said finally, still not turning to acknowledge the presence of anyone else. "I suppose now we have all gotten exactly what we wanted."


	9. Epilogue

It was odd to Avon to have a window in medical. Neither the liberator, nor the Scorpio had had one. In fact, he couldn't recall ever being on a ship that had allowed for actual star gazing. In the last month, he had spent more time in this tiny part of the ship than almost any other. It was quiet here, and he could count, for the most part, on being undisturbed. His eyes drifted down to the figure in the bed across the room. Unmistakably a female form, breathing slowly, body a bridge for the traffic of seeping liquids.

Avon shifted. His hip had been healed, the movement returned to his hand. The scars under his clothes he had kept, for reasons that possibly he didn't even understand. He had stood before the mirror for hours, memorizing this new self, considering this idea of a physical clean slate. In the end, he just couldn't do it. The thought made him nauseous.

Meanwhile, his kinetic therapy was going well, and the limp he retained now was so slight as to be almost non-existent.

He listened to the sounds of the ship at night, and found that he had reacclimated to trusting the ships chronometers to tell him when he should be up and when down, as there was no other reference in the black space around him. There was something comforting in the endless, weightless, timeless drift. It was a cold womb, but he was used to it.

He heard the familiar footsteps in the hall and shifted slightly, turning his face fulling to the viewing window. Aza entered and stopped just inside the door, taking in the scene.

"How is she doing?" she asked, for some reason keeping her voice low, perhaps in deference to the figure in the bed.

"It's not a _she_. You can't think of mutoids as people."

"She was one, once. She might be again if my re-programing ideas work. We won't know unless she wakes up, of course."

Avon turned towards the room to give her the full benefit of his disapproving frown. "The moment she wakes up she'll do everything in her power to kill us all and steer this ship right back into Servalan's waiting arms."

Aza advance to the silent figure of the female mutoid. The only Federation survivor of their mutiny on board the ship. "You never told me why she changed her name to Sleer."

Avon was confused for a moment by the wild veer in topic, but he leaned back for as moment to consider it before saying "because I don't know." He gave her his toothsome smile. "We never discussed it."

They watched each other a moment longer, and Avon was angry to discover that he still found her terribly attractive. Disappointed as well, in himself, with his weak aging body that longed for comfort, was susceptible to exhaustion and despondency and lust. Especially lust it seemed, spurring him on to remembrances of her soft and welcoming body. He shook himself out of his reverie with a question. "Do you know where she got the name Chevron?" he asked.

"No."

"I gave it to her. I must have. It was the name I used the first time I met Tarrant. The minutia you can get out of someone during torture is amazing. With her tasteful sense of humour, the temptation must have been too much to bear."

Aza felt her heart go out to him. If not for the fact that he would have bitten it off, she would have extended her hand to him as well. Instead she checked the monitors, quietly ticking off the life-signs of their charge. The male mutoid had died a few moments after his Commanding officer, no blaster bolts needed. His life ebbed away as his arms gave out and his entrails slithered to the ground. The clean-up had been traumatizing to several of the new crew. White had spent that day and many after hiding in the engine room, _learning the ropes_ , and Tagg was still not talking to Avon. His surliness didn't seem to extend to the rest of the crew, though, and Avon guessed that the sight of a man shot full in the face with no provocation had put the last nail in the coffin of he and the red-head's rocky acquaintance.

A fact that Avon greeted predominantly with relief.

Aza turned to the computer tech, examining him quietly in the calm light. Although they had done all the physical restoration possible in the well equipped medical facilities of their new ship, they had been unable to replace her eye. She wore a patch over the void now, and only a few stray scars wound around that side of her face. They were light, but obvious.

She touched the patch now, as if aware of his thoughts.

"It bothers you, doesn't it?"

"No. Long ago I made a vow to always have at least one person in my life with an eye patch." He rolled his eyes and turned back to his stargazing. Undaunted, Aza sat down on the bed beside him. "As soon as we make planetfall somewhere I can have a new one cloned."

"If you wish."

She glanced at him out of the corner of her remaining eye. She disliked the distance he had put between them, but understood. The last time they had truly had a conversation, he had been another man. And she had done her best to die for him. Not something she quite knew how to navigate her way around tactfully in conversation.

"You've been very quiet recently," she tried.

He looked at her like an idiot child. "Perhaps because I don't want to be here."

"But there's nowhere else for you to go. You might as well stay here and be useful."

"Useful?" He laughed, and although it was covered with the same dogged self-protecting sneer, there was very real pain in it. A sound being torn from his chest. It took a long time to subside. She kept him under her steady gaze. "I'm sorry," he sighed "I'm just realizing I was very much wrong about something."

"And what was that?"

"Regret. It's impossible to keep it a small part of life. It seems now that it's the only part of life."

"Something you told someone?"

"Yes. What a snide pompous bastard. And more than a little mad. So, basically I'm restored to normal."

Aza nodded, but her mind was firmly lodged elsewhere. "You can't leave us, Kerr. You know that, right?"

He looked at her sharply. "Don't call me that."

"What? Kerr? Oh, no, I refuse to be in a last-name only relationship with you."

"I was in a last name only relationship with my parents."

"Yes, but I'm hoping the sex was a lot better with me."

He managed not to smile at her, but it was a near thing. "How about this," he countered, "we agree to disagree, and you put me down on the next planet with a functioning casino."

"Money and anonymity? You bungled that long before I got to you. I mean, it might work, but you'd have to get surgery."

"Change my face? Might be a good idea."

"It's too bad really. I quite like your face."

"Not trying to start all that up again, are you?"

"All that? I'm not sure I've ever heard the prospect of going to bed with me described in just exactly that way, but yes, I would consider it."

"It wouldn't be him, you know. Chevron. It wouldn't be with someone who cared about you at all."

"Charming."

"Don't."

"Don't what? It's the truth."

"Aza, I have killed, personally or through consequence, every single woman I have ever cared about. I'm not exactly sure why it is you are so keen to be on that list."

"I'm different."

"You are _exactly_ the same. Just the next blood-thirsty Blake in a distressingly long and boring line. I don't like you. I certainly don't care about you, and I will not mourn you when you invariably die. The only thing of value you've ever done for me was quick, messy, and probably a whole let better for you. Think about that before you make any more of your disgustingly obvious offers."

Aza stared at him for a moment, but not with the hatred Avon so eagerly expected. Instead she seemed to size him up, and finally slid off the bed to her feet, taking his now good right hand in her own. "Alright, Avon, but remember, you brought this on yourself." She tugged at his hand until he stood opposite her, looking down into those fiery green eyes, a full head lower than his own.

"O my dear Guide," she said, "who more than seven times hast rendered me security, and drawn me from imminent peril that before me stood."

Avon was not impressed with the quote, and was about to tell her so when the next line came so unerringly to his mind that he had to tell her, in a voice for once not snide or angry: "Do not desert me, said I, thus undone; and if the going farther be denied us, let us retrace our steps together swiftly."

She said back to him: "And that Lord, who had led me thitherward, said unto me: "Fear not, because our passage none can take from us, it by Such is given."

Avon's eyes narrowed accusingly. "How do you know what's in my mind?"

"Because I put it there. You would have gone insane, Kerr, really and completely. I had taken everything you knew away from you. I wanted to leave something for you to think about. To focus on. It can make things…a little easier."

"And all these classical references I keep spewing like a bloody Edith Hamilton compilation on the fritz…"

"Dante's inferno. One of my favorites. I couldn't smuggle any of my own programing into the Department of Alterations, but I could access my reading list at any time – I wanted to give you…"

"A world of words to escape with," he finished for her, remembering Madam Scurry's odd words. "A poetic decent into hell."

She nodded at him. "See? Definitely as good for you as it was for me."

Avon had his arms around her instantly, crushing her against him as he had wanted to do for ages and ages, closing his eyes so there was no way to see even a hint of triumph on her face.

He wouldn't stay. He couldn't. But maybe he could convince her to let this madness go, to choose her life over this foolish adventure. He didn't think so, but this was a split-second for dreaming, and it was all he would allow himself.

Perhaps he would take her up on her offer. He wanted to badly. Perhaps he would seek out a soft place to hide from his nightmares in her quarters, under a shared cover. Perhaps he would consider it, some other time, when she was not so close. Her nearness and warmth were making it hard to focus. He needed time, space to think.

For now, he did have a debt to pay, and he wanted to keep their slates even for some reason. Let the rest of the universe go and hang. If Aza was his to warm himself by, then it was in his best interest to try a little harder to postpone her inevitable death.

"Then I'll do you one better," he said, sliding his right hand through her hair, tracing through it as if it were a flowing river. Let her hair be the Lethe, meandering onwards towards the Gates of Ivory, the Gates of Horn. In his mind he made of her limbs the branches of the elm from which false dreams cling, her sure stare the plain of judgement between them.

"I can give you Blake back."

Her gaze sharpened, expression warring between hope and disbelief. He gripped her arms, so tight it must have hurt, but she welcomed him still, in all his ugly glory. "And then," he said "you'll set me free."

* * *

 **The End y'all. Thanks so much for your continued patience, if anyone out there is still in fact reading this strange thing. Please leave me a comment and let me know what you thought. There's more, of course, in my addled brain, but life is busy and hits on this one are a little low, so I may shuffle off to other fandom pastures.**


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